Top court confirms 9-yr term for foreign fighter

(ANSA) - Rome, November 20 - The supreme Court of Cassation on Wednesday upheld a nine-year sentence for Italy's first woman foreign fighter, who went to join ISIS in 2014 and never returned.
    A terror conviction this became definitive for Maria Giulia 'Fatima' Sergio.
    The high court of appeal rejected appeals for her and another four defendants.
    These included her Albanian husband, Aldo Kobuzi, who got 10 years again.
    They also included a Canadian-born 'indoctrinator', Haik Bushra, who got nine years also.
    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.