Muslim mom on trial for trip to Syria

A 30-year-old woman appeared in a Munich district court on Wednesday facing charged relating to a trip she took to war-torn Syria in 2014. The woman, who converted to Islam in 2012, claimed she traveled to Syria for humanitarian purposes.

Prosecutors claimed she was planning on being an active participant in the Syrian civil war and was prepared to kill fighters supporting President Bashar al-Assad's regime. The specific charge is of preparing a serious act of violent subversion.

The woman also faces charges of child abduction for taking her two daughters, aged three and seven at the time, away from their father and preventing visiting opportunities.

Although the woman admits to traveling to Syria, she claims her children were always kept safe and that she was not involved in the civil war.

Upon the woman's return to Germany in May 2014, she was arrested and her kids were placed in the custody of their father.

German officials are concerned about the number of Europeans returning from Syria, where many believe they could have received terrorist training.

A German intelligence official said the number of fighters returning home from conflict zones in Iraq and Syria has risen to 200. About 70 of them are thought to have committed war crimes in the region, where Islamic State militants have seized wide swathes of territory and are terrorizing local populations, according to Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Some 600 people are estimated to have traveled from Germany to fight for jihadi groups in the Middle East.

mz/sms (dpa, AFP)