"I consider that the guilt of the defendant is completely proven by the materials of the case and the testimonies of witnesses… I ask to give her a sentence of five years in custody and a fine of 150,000 rubles [$2,350]," the prosecutor said.
Meanwhile, the lawyer of Alexandra Ivanova criticized the prosecution's logic in accusing his client of terrorism, saying that her attempt to go to Syria did not mean she would engage in extremism there.
"The case documents state that she was on her way to Syria, but who she would be there and what she would do is not included. The position of the prosecution is that if she is doing a terrorist's laundry, cooking for him and bearing him children, then she is a terrorist herself," Ilya Novikov said at the hearing, as reported by a RIA Novosti correspondent.
Novikov asked Moscow District Military Court to acquit his client, while the prosecutor demanded a five-year sentence for her.
The lawyer said that the prosecution was trying to "make an example" out of Karaulova to show that "IS [militants] are bad, one shouldn't fall in love with them for fear of being arrested."
Karaulova, who had changed her name to Ivanova, was a sophomore in the Moscow State University, when she was detained on June 4 on the Turkish-Syrian border while traveling with a group of foreigners allegedly recruited by Daesh militants. She left for Istanbul without telling her parents on May 27.
Daesh, outlawed in Russia the United States and many other countries, controls large areas of Syria and Iraq. The group has been spreading its influence to other countries and is notorious for recruiting jihadists, mainly young people, from all over the world via social media.
