Italian foreign fighter 'Fatima' 9-yr term upheld

(ANSA) - Milan, June 13 - A Milan appeal court on Wednesday upheld a nine-year prison term for Italy's alleged first foreign fighter, Maria Giulia 'Fatima' Sergio. The court also confirmed the other sentences by the court of first-instance, including a 10-year term for Sergio's Albanian husband, Aldo Kobuzi. Sergio was tried in absentia after going to Syria to be a combatant for the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group in 2014.
    Her father Sergio Sergio was sentenced to four years in jail in the first-instance trial.
    Sergio's sister was tried separately and sentenced to five years four months in prison.
    The family, all of whom were converts to Islam, were arrested in July 2015 when prosecutors said they and seven other suspects had joined ISIS and were on the verge of leaving to fight in Syria. The mother, Assunta Buonfiglio, died of cardiac arrest aged 60 in October 2015, on the eve of her release into house arrest.