Two masked and heavily armed guards stand in front of the Higher Regional Court
in Celle. It is the trial against Marcia M. that has warranted this increased
security. The German Federal Prosecutor charged this female returnee from Lower
Saxony with membership in a foreign terrorist organization as well as a war
crime against property, often referred to as “looting.” However, the
defendant’s involvement in the planning of a terrorist attack in Germany makes
this trial different from others.





<[link removed]>
<[link removed]>
<[link removed]>
<[link removed]>



ISIS Women in Court: Marcia M. – A Perfect Cover?



Read ISIS Women In Court: Marcia M. – A Perfect Cover? by clicking here
<[link removed]>.



ISIS Women In Court: Marcia M. – A Perfect Cover?

By Sofia Koller, Senior Research Analyst, CEP



The women who left Germany to join ISIS and returned are standing trial. This
CEP blog series follows the trials of some of these female returnees. The first
part on Monika K. can be foundhere
<[link removed]>
, and the second part on Nadine K.here
<[link removed]>
. An overview of the state of prosecutions in Germany can be foundhere
<[link removed]>
(available in English and German) and recent developments in repatriationhere
<[link removed]>
.



Two masked and heavily armed guards stand in front of the Higher Regional
Court in Celle. It is the trial against Marcia M. that has warranted this
increased security. The German Federal Prosecutorcharged
<[link removed]>
this female returnee from Lower Saxony with membership in a foreign terrorist
organization as well as a war crime against property, often referred to as
“looting.” However, the defendant’s involvement in theplanning
<[link removed]> of a terrorist attack
in Germany makes this trial different from others.



“I was Pretty Radical at the Time”



After growing up in a Christian home, Marcia M. converted to Islam in 2010.
Through her relationship with her first husband, who she married in 2011 in
Tunisia, Marcia M. was becoming more and more involved in the extremist
Islamist circle in Wolfsburg, Germany. Her radicalization process continued
during the marriage to her second husband Oğuz G. He was a board member of the
mosque of the extremist organization Islamic Circle in Hildesheim. In 2021, the
mosque’s imam known asAbu Walaa
<[link removed]>, a leading ISIS
authority, wassentenced
<[link removed]>
to 10 years and six months in prison for recruiting several of his followers to
travel to Syria and join ISIS. In autumn 2015, Marcia M. also left Germany to
join the terrorist organization. In court, shesays
<[link removed]>
that she was “pretty radical at the time.”



The Perfect Cover



Once in ISIS territory, Marcia M. and her husband lived in several locations
in Syria and Iraq. There, she started contacting trusted “sisters” in Germany
who sympathized with ISIS’s goals. Her objective was to find two women willing
to marry ISIS fighters. Their future husbands would come to Germany for “work.”
However, in reality this was intended to be a cover to allow several duos of
fighters to carry out several terrorist attacks, for example, on a music
festival in Hildesheim. Their marriage was expected to provide these fighters
with the perfect cover. But one of the women, who was being recruited as the
“wife of convenience,” turned out to be a contact of the German domestic
intelligence service (BfV). In September 2016, this woman had alreadyforwarded
<[link removed]> the instructions she
received online by Marcia M. to the BfV, who started an intelligence operation.
In the end, the plot never succeeded, since the fighters, which in the internal
communication were referred to as “packages from Syria,” neverreached
<[link removed]> their
destination.



From Kurdish to German Detention



After several attempts to leave ISIS territory had failed, Marcia M. and her
husband surrendered to Kurdish forces in October 2017. In detention, they
provided details
<[link removed]>
of the plot (including the various German-speaking ISIS members that were
involved) to the German foreign intelligence service (BND) and the CIA. After
spending five years in several prisons and camps in Northeast Syria, Marcia M.
was repatriated by the German Foreign Office in October 2022. In this sense,
her case is also unique. So far,Germany’s approach
<[link removed]>
to repatriation of their nationals from Northeast Syria has been to only
return minors together with their mothers. An adult woman with no children of
her own, Marcia M. wasrepatriated <> on “humanitarian grounds.” According to the
Foreign Office
<[link removed]>,
the few German women remaining in Syria have refused to be returned with their
children. Like other female returnees, Marcia M. was arrested upon her arrival
at the airport in Frankfurt and is currently in pre-trial detention.



Remorse and a Partial Confession



On the first day of her trial on April 17, 2023, Marcia M. pleaded guilty to
almost all charges levied against her by the Federal Prosecutors. For example,
she admitted having recruited several women as ISIS members. She also confessed
that—as a trained electronics technician—she was, for a very short time,
leading the fabrication of wire connections, which might have been used for
booby traps. However, Marcia M.denied
<[link removed]> fabricating suicide belts,
having fired a weapon, or offered to carry out an attack herself. She also
denied having lived in a “looted” house, which would amount to a war crime. In
her statement, Marcia M. also stressed her own suffering, from enduring a
difficult pregnancy and several miscarriages to the horrible conditions in
Kurdish detention facilities. Now, she claims that shewants
<[link removed]>
to understand what led to her radicalization.



“She was Right, Everyone Else was not.”



One week after this statement, Marcia M. encountered for the first time in
person one of the women she had tried to recruit to marry a potential attacker.
Songül G. recounted the online conversations with—presumably—Marcia M. to plan
the fighter’s arrival. Songül G. argued that her primary goal was to travel to
Syria. Once she learned that Marcia M. had managed to get to ISIS territory,
she became “very important” to Songül G. At first, Marcia M. started giving her
advice. Songül G. gave interesting insights into Marcia M.’s personality,
describing her as “very dominant,” “resolute,” and “aggressive.” In a Facebook
chat group with other German ISIS sympathizers, Marcia M. would directly attack
those who had different views, threatening to delete them from her friend’s
list. Songül G. argued that when Marcia M. suddenly tried to convince her to
stay in Germany, she agreed to the plan because she did not want to upset
Marcia M. At the time, it was not important to Songül G. “if I hurt other
people or not.” Songül G. also explained that Marcia M. said she wanted to
fight. Looking at the defendant, Songül G. said that she was not surprised to
see Marcia M. sitting in the courtroom without a veil, since “they all come
back and take down the headscarf.” On the witness stand, Songül G. presents
herself as repentant and reformed. However, in her own trial, the presiding
judge found Songül G. to be calculating, manipulative, fanatic, and “highly
conspiratorial
<[link removed]>
.” For her support of an ISIS plot, Songül G. had beensentenced
<[link removed]>
to five years and nine months in prison—more than the prosecutors had asked
for.



The Many Faces of Female Returnees



A central challenge that underpins all the trials against female returnees is
whether they are as disillusioned as some try to portray themselves in court.
Are they only pretending and hiding their real motives? It will take time to
evaluate whether returned women have really distanced themselves from ISIS
ideology and critically reflected their decisions. Germany has been one of the
most active countriesprosecuting women
<[link removed]>
returning from Syria and Iraq, including prosecutions for war crimes. The
trials are providing important insights into the variety of profiles, motives,
and behavior of female returnees after their return. One observation is that
most German women who traveled to Syria should not be considered naïve or mere
victims. At the same time, involvement in attack planning, as is the case with
Marcia M., remains the exception. One of the challenges for the prosecution,
rehabilitation, and reintegration of female returnees will be to ensure that
the convicted women assume responsibility for their crimes, while at the same
time critically review and question the factors that led to their
radicalization.



Marcia M. is facing up to 10 years in prison. The trial is expected to
continue at least until June 2023.



###







Unsubscribe
<[link removed]>
|Donate <[link removed]> | Contact Us
<[link removed]>


Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe for yourself here
<[link removed]>
.