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Europe
Sweden finds woman guilty for committing war crimes in Syria
2023-03-30
[NPASYRIA] Gothenburg District Court sentenced on Wednesday a woman to three months in prison for belonging to Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) and involving in war crimes in Raqqa Governorate, northern Syria, in 2014.

Fatosh Ibrahim, 35, from Gothenburg, on Sweden’s west coast, posted photos from Syria of herself with severed heads impaled on the fence of Naim roundabout in Raqqa on her social media accounts in 2014.

Ibrahim commented on the photos, "mutilated bodies" hinting the people in the pictures.

The court said in its ruling that Ibrahim posted "disparaging comments" about the bodies in the photos, expressing that they deserve what happened to them.

She said in the court, "I posted the pictures on Facebook, I don’t know what I was thinking. I was war maimed."

Ibrahim has two siblings who belonged to ISIS and later all of them returned home.

Ibrahim claimed that she did not travel to Syria to join ISIS, as she travelled to Syria in 2012 and was forced to stay there, and ISIS came in 2013.

Ibrahim’s first husband was British-Pak, who died in 2013; while her last husband is currently imprisoned in Australia.
The Mirror adds:
Ibrahim is one of three siblings from Gothenburg, on Sweden's west coast, who all belonged to the Islamic State and later returned home, according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen.

It reports that her brother Hassan Al-Mandlawi was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism offences, while her younger sister died after she had returned to Sweden with her shrapnel-injured daughter.

And the sister's son died at the age of three when he was playing with a hand grenade that detonated.

"It was very common to see dead bodies in Raqqa", Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim said: "I was permanently employed as a welder. My brother wanted me to go to Syria and visit. Then I got stuck there and couldn't travel home. That was in 2012 and IS came in 2013."

The publication claims that her first husband was British-Pakistani militant Ibrahim Almazwagi, 21, the Hertfordshire University graduate who died in 2013.

Her last husband is currently imprisoned in Australia.

Ibrahim told the court that she wanted to stay where her husband was buried but was forced to go to Raqqa.

She returned to Sweden in 2017, according to the verdict.

Ibrahim was also convicted of threatening and defaming social workers in Sweden after they took away her children.

From the Independent in 2013:
The first British-born casualty of the Syrian civil war has been revealed as Ibrahim al-Mazwagi, a 21-year-old jihadist who graduated from Hertfordshire University last year.

To his friends, he was a sociable member of the university's American football team, but to rebels in Syria, he was one of about 80 British men who are believed to have joined the fight against Bashir al-Assad in the last two years. According to the Facebook page set up in his honour, the north Londoner had fought in Libya in 2011
...he’ll have been Al Qaeda, then, and part of the crowd of brothers, cousins, and schoolmates who were rounded up a few years later while preparing for a major multi-pronged terror attack for ISIS ...
before heading to fight alongside his "brothers" in Syria last August. Announcing his death, a message on the page read: "He took part of [sic] a major operation against the Assad regime forces yesterday and passed in the ensuing battles."
And the Daily Mail in 2015:
A Swedish court has tossed in the slammer
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
two men to life in jail on terror charges after police found footage linking them to two beheadings in Syria in 2013.

The Goteborg District Court ruled that not only were Hassan Mostafa al-Mandlawi, 32, and 30-year-old Sultan al-Amin, involved in the killings but that the murders were intended to intimidate and frighten people in Syria and abroad.

'The murder films have obviously been crucial, and the prosecutor has managed to show that it is those two guys who are in the videos,' the court's chairman, Ralf G Larsson, told the TT news agency after pronouncing the guilty verdict on Monday.

The court said police found photographic and video evidence on computer memory sticks seized during a search at the Goteborg home of one of the men. It showed two killings, including a beheading, at an industrial area north of Aleppo between April 12 and May 2, 2013. While neither man is shown with a knife in his hand, the prosecution argued, and the court agreed, that footage was evidence that the men were present during the murders and had an intention to kill.

Chief Prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnstrom said the pair, who were arrested in July in Sweden, had both 'expressed joy over the deeds.'

The men have denied involvement and said they would appeal. Mr al-Mandlawi's lawyer Lars Salkola previously argued that his client should not have been prosecuted because a gunshot wound to the head left him wheelchair-bound and unable to communicate.

A life sentence in Sweden generally means a minimum of 20-25 years in prison.

Swedish press reported that the two men had lived in Sweden for years and held Swedish citizenship.

The two men traveled to Syria in the Spring of 2013 and were involved in the killing of two men who worked for a Syrian regime owned oil company.

Al-Amin, who has been tossed in the slammer
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
since July, will begin serving his life sentence immediately. The court also ordered the imprisonment of al-Mandlawi, who had been released after questioning because he used a wheelchair following a gunshot wound to the head.

Al-Mandlawi's lawyer, Lars Salkola, said he was not satisfied with the verdict especially as he can only discuss it with his client's relatives because al-Mandlawi is unable to communicate with him because of the brain injury.
Brain damage, speechless, and wheelchair-bound? It’s a start.
In line with international practice, Swedish courts may try certain crimes committed abroad if the suspects live or are apprehended in Sweden.
Related:
Goteborg: 2022-01-13 85 Per Cent Of Sweden's Fatal Shooting Suspects Come From Foreign Backgrounds
Goteborg: 2019-05-20 Sweden: Ruling Social Democrats Facing Worst Ever EU Election Result
Goteborg: 2018-12-14 Sweden arrests man suspected of preparing terror attack
Related:
Raqqa: 2023-03-18 SDF arrests 3 ISIS members in Syria’s Raqqa – Coalition says
Raqqa: 2023-03-18 SDF says 9 anti-terror fighters killed in Duhok helicopter crash — due to bad weather
Raqqa: 2023-03-15 54.000 Syrians return from quake-affected Turkey
Posted by:Fred

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