THE HAGUE, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- A Dutch woman who travelled to Syria with her family to join the Islamic State (IS) group received a two-year sentence for "promoting terrorist activities," the first of such a case in the Netherlands.
"The court considers it proven that she planned to prepare and promote terrorist activities," said the Rotterdam District Court in a statement.
However, the woman was cleared of belonging to a terrorist group. She has already spent the last 11 months in prison and the remaining 13 months of her sentence were suspended for three years, so the court said she would effectively not go back to jail.
The woman converted to Islam and left the Netherlands at the age of 20 in the summer of 2015 with her husband and two young children. Her husband wanted to join jihadist fighters.
Months later, with the help of her father in the Netherlands, she fled with her children to Iraq. In July 2016, she was arrested when she flew back to Amsterdam. It was feared that she might have been sent back to carry out attacks on Dutch soil.
No evidence was found during her detention that she was involved in any terrorist plot. But "judging from her statements, the accused knew even before her departure that her husband harbored sympathy for IS and that he wanted to travel to Syria," said the judges. It means that she was guilty of facilitating terrorism by supporting her husband.
The jihadist movement in the Netherlands consists of a few hundred actual members and thousands of sympathizers, according to the Dutch National Coordinator for Security and Counter-terrorism (NCTV).
As of June 2017, a total of some 280 people, a third of them women, left the Netherlands with jihadist intentions. Of them, approximately 190 are still in Syria and Iraq, 45 have died, and around 50 have returned. Enditem
