Gothenburg District Court on Wednesday sentenced a woman to three months in prison for a war crime in Raqqa in 2014, “among other things.”
The sentence is connected to Islamic State placing “mutilated bodies” at a roundabout in central Raqqa — a Syrian city that served as ISIS headquarters between 2014 and 2017. In a statement, the court said “the woman had twice published photographs” of heads impaled on a fence at the roundabout.
An image shared on the woman’s social media depicts a woman in front of a severed head. The court said that she had written “derogatory comments” about the people in the pictures.
Nevertheless, the 35-year-old denied any wrongdoing, saying that it was not her depicted in the photos she posted on social media.
The court said that the described action was likely to “seriously violate the personal dignity of protected persons” under Swedish law. The woman additionally expressed clear sympathy with the terror group’s acts, according to the court.
She was also convicted of “intimidation of a public servant and aggravated defamation, directed at two social workers.”
The court explained the sentence in a written statement to POLITICO, saying that “all of these crimes have been committed at a distance, online or over the phone,” adding that the court had considered these circumstances, along with the “nature of each criminal act and the context” in which they have been committed.
Iain Cameron, professor in public international law at Sweden’s Uppsala University, said the light sentence is likely because the woman did not murder or mutilate the people in the pictures. He added that the punishment is “presumably in line with the relatively lenient Swedish sentencing practices.”
