German woman on trial for raising money for Islamic State fighters

A German woman accused of raising donations for jailed Islamic State fighters and writing them letters of encouragement went on trial in Dusseldorf on Thursday.

Prosecutors have charged the 42-year-old of sympathizing with the terrorist militia, which controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria between around 2014 and 2017.

The mother of four is accused of having operated a group called Free Our Sisters to support Islamic State fighters and supporters imprisoned in Germany and abroad.

Over the course of five years, she is said to have raised nearly €14,000 ($16,000) on various online platforms which was passed on to prisoners including in Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Austria, and Kurdish camps, or their relatives.

The woman is also accused of having called on people online to write letters and post photos containing Islamic State slogans to encourage the detainees to remain loyal to the terrorist group. She is also said to have written such letters herself.

As the trial got under way at the Dusseldorf Higher Regional court, the woman’s defence team argued she had only acted on humanitarian grounds.

She had been looking to support people in need, not the Islamic state, her lawyers said.

They noted the woman had been under the scrutiny of the security authorities for years and had not gone into hiding.

Several cases against her had been dismissed, they said, arguing that the current case essentially revolves around the reevaluation of facts that were already well known.

A representative of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office responded that the woman had merely pretended to act on humanitarian grounds.

The defendant, who converted to Islam, has been in pre-trial detention since September 2025. The court has scheduled 10 trial dates through early July.