BERLIN: A German 16-year-old girl suspected of joining the militant Islamic State group in Iraq was arrested last week in Mosul, a German judicial source said on Saturday.

“The Dresden prosecutor confirms that Linda W. was identified in Iraq,” where she is receiving German consular assistance, said the prosecutor’s office in Dresden, near the teen’s eastern hometown of Pulsnitz.

German media earlier reported Iraqi soldiers had captured the teenager last week along with several other suspected IS ‘brides’ in a tunnel where they had taken refuge and where weapons and explosives belts had also been uncovered.

Linda W. disappeared last year after apparently making contact with IS members via internet messaging and reportedly converting to Islam.

German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Saturday Linda W. had been detained in Baghdad with three other German women and that they had been questioned following the liberation of Mosul from IS control which Iraq reported on July 10.

Spiegel said the Iraqi authorities handed the German embassy a list of names of German women in the area “at the start of the week” and added consular officials had since visited four of them at a prison at Baghdad airport.

The magazine said one of the four was of Moroccan origin and that another was believed to be of Chechen origin but had a German passport.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2017