Teenager in Germany Sentenced to Jail for Islamic State-Inspired Assault 16-year-old girl was found guilty of attempted murder and other charges in stabbing of police officer by Ruth Bender
http://www.wsj.com/articles/teenager-in-germany-sentenced-to-jail-for-islamic-state-inspired-assault-1485449284
BERLIN—A teenage girl who pledged allegiance to Islamic State was sentenced to six years in juvenile detention for stabbing and severely wounding a German police officer last February, ending the country’s first trial of an attacker accused of drawing inspiration from the militant group.
The 16-year-old girl, identified as Safia S., was found guilty of attempted murder, aggravated assault and supporting a foreign terrorist organization, the regional court in Celle that heard the case said.
Thursday’s sentence is substantially tougher than those handed down in recent terror-related trials, which have targeted unsuccessful plotters, members of designated terrorist organizations or people who had fought alongside such groups in Syria or Iraq before returning to Germany.
The trial of Safia S., who was 15 when she stabbed a federal policeman in the neck, was seen as a test of Germany’s ability to address the growing number of radicalized children and youth in its large Muslim community.
Juvenile law in Germany emphasizes the reintegration of youth offenders back into society and gives judges wide leeway in sentencing. While the sentence handed down to Safia S. was lengthy, it fell within the judge’s discretion, said Nikolaos Gazeas, a Cologne-based lawyer and expert on counterterrorism law.
Germany is still reeling from an attack in December by a Tunisian asylum seeker who rammed a stolen truck into a Berlin Christmas market, leaving 12 dead and scores wounded. Authorities have been under fire since it was disclosed that the perpetrator was a known extremist who had been on a security services’ watch list for months.
The court said chat logs found on the girl’s cellphone indicated that she carried out the stabbing in support of Islamic State, making it an act of terrorism. The trial, including the announcement of the guilty verdict and the sentence, took place behind closed doors because of the defendant’s young age.
Safia S.’s lawyer, Mutlu Günal, said he would appeal the verdict. He had argued in the girl’s defense that she had no intention of killing the policeman, didn’t have a terrorist motive and wasn’t in a position to measure the gravity of her act at the time she carried it out.
Safia S. was born and raised in Germany to a Moroccan mother and German father and has nationality in both countries.
Prosecutors argued during her trial that she had embraced the jihadist ideology of Islamic State by November 2015. But several security officials said the girl’s strict Muslim upbringing had certainly contributed to her radicalization. Videos disseminated on the internet, confirmed by authorities as authentic, show Safia S. at the age of 7, her head covered in a scarf, reciting the Quran with a well-known fundamentalist German preacher. CONTINUE AT SITE
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