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JERUSALEM, March 21 (Xinhua) -- An Israeli woman who joined the Islamic State (IS) forces in Iraq was sentenced by an Israeli court to 50 months in prison on Tuesday.
The woman, Sabrin Zabeidat, 30, is a citizen of Israel from the northern city of Sakhnin.
In 2015, she and her husband, Wissam Zabeidat, 41, had contacted an IS operative through social networks on the internet and later decided to join the Salafi forces in Syria and Iraq, according to her conviction.
About a year later, the couple had traveled to Turkey with their children, who were 3, 6, and 8-year-old at the time. Before crossing into Syria, they swore allegiance to the IS, the court said.
They then moved to Mosul, Iraq, where Wissam received a Kalashnikov rifle and joined the fighting in the area. Sabrin worked as an operator of surveillance cameras in a hospital.
During one of the battles, Wisam was injured in his leg and needed hospital care. In the wake of heavy shelling by U.S. fighter jets in Mosul and pressures by their families to return home, the couple and their children began an eight-month journey to the Turkish-Syrian border.
They tried to infiltrate into Turkey ten times, without success. When they finally managed to infiltrate into Turkey, they were arrested by local police and transferred to Israel in September last year.
Sabrin was convicted of contacting a foreign agent, unlawfully living the country, membership in a forbidden association, and membership in a terror group.
Her lawyer told the Hebrew-language Ynet news website that she might appeal against the verdict. "We think the court gave her a punishment too severe," the lawyer said, adding that Sabrin only wanted to live under the Sharia law and was not accused of harming the security of Israel.
Over the past years, dozens of Arab Israelis were arrested under suspicion that they have gone to Syria, or planned to do so, in order to join the Islamic State.
