That man’s German wife, who, according to German prosecutors, “let her husband do as he liked, and took no action to save the girl,” is on trial for murder as a war crime, among other charges.

Because of German privacy laws, the defendant is being identified only as Jennifer W., age 27. Photos from the courtroom, where the woman heard the charges against her Tuesday, show her dressed in a black blazer and white blouse, her hair pulled into a long braid. She covered her face with a red folder.

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Foreign fighters and sympathizers from more than 100 countries joined the Islamic State, and now, as some try to return to their countries of origin, authorities are struggling to figure out what to do with them. This case may set the stage for how others are dealt with if and when they return home.

The indictment in the German case states that the woman left Germany in late August 2014, reaching Iraq by way of Turkey and Syria. Once there, she “immediately joined the decision-making and command structure of the [Islamic State].” The next summer, prosecutors say, she patrolled parks in Fallujah and Mosul, carrying an explosives vest, pistol and Kalashnikov rifle, while enforcing regulations that dictated how women behaved and dressed.

It was around that time, the indictment said, that she and her husband “bought a five-year-old girl out of a group of prisoners of war and subsequently kept the child in her household as a slave.”

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Prosecutors said that in January 2016, she traveled to Turkey, where she applied for new documents at the German Embassy. Turkish authorities arrested her and deported her to Germany, but she was intent on returning to the Islamic State, and was later caught by German authorities while trying to return to Syria.

The New York Times reported that prosecutors gathered their evidence from the defendant herself, who shared her story in a secretly recorded conversation with a driver who she thought was helping her return to the Middle East but was in fact working for Germany.

But ahead of the trial, doubts were raised about whether the suspect’s claims should be used as evidence against her. German broadcaster ARD cited unnamed sources as saying that the woman tended to exaggerate and that her husband might not even have been a member of the Islamic State.

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However, a plaintiff and witness in the case is the girl’s mother. Identified only as Nora B., she now lives in Germany. And her lawyer, international human rights advocate Amal Clooney, said in a statement this week that “Yazidi victims of genocide have waited far too long for their day in court,” the Associated Press reported.

“I hope that this will be the first of many trials that will finally bring ISIS to justice in line with international law,” Clooney said.

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria has said that the Islamic State’s treatment of the Yazidi minority “amounts to crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

“Genocide has occurred and is ongoing,” Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the commission, said in 2016. “ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities.”

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In recent months, there have been a number of high-profile cases of foreign Islamic State female members, including one British and one American who have been told they will not be allowed to return home. Shamima Begum, a British teenager who left London to join the Islamic State when she was 15, reappeared this year after a Times of London reporter found her in a Syrian camp. She was pregnant at the time and wanted to return home, but British authorities refused to allow her back, prompting an ethical and legal debate over what governments owe citizens who leave home to join terrorist organizations abroad. Begum ended up giving birth in Syria, and her son died soon after he was born.

Hoda Muthana, a 24-year-old from Alabama, also appeared in a Syrian camp and said that she wanted to return to the United States. But President Trump said on Twitter that he told the State Department not to allow her back into the country. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Muthana “is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States.”

“She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States,” he said.

Rick Noack in Berlin contributed to this report.