The widows of isis fighters often have to flee their towns, for fear of retribution. They end up in camps, where many are harassed and raped by armed

Sahar questioned the other suspects first. One, named Haidar, who wore a back brace, said that he had been mistakenly arrested for a car-bomb attack, in 2014, and that in the course of an interrogation, to make the torture stop, he had started naming random people, including Louai.

Judge Sahar then called upon Louai, who rose from his chair and gripped the cage to support himself. “I went to sell my car in the market,” he said. “Then Haidar called me, and I was ambushed, arrested.” He spoke in an urgent, high-pitched tone, but he stuttered and slurred his words.

During interrogations, he said, officers had beaten him so badly that he suffered a blood clot in his brain. “They also broke my back!” he shouted. “They broke my feet and hands! I can barely walk!”

“Enough evidence—I ask for a guilty verdict,” the prosecutor said. It was the only phrase she uttered in court that morning.

Haidar’s lawyer noted that there was no witness and no material evidence, and that his request for a medical examination, to prove that Haidar had been tortured, had been rejected. Louai’s lawyer explained that Louai’s confession had been coerced and made no sense: he had said that he remotely detonated the car bomb, when, in fact, the police had concluded that it was a suicide attack.

Louai had spent four years in pretrial detention, and, during the two or three minutes allotted to his defense, the judges had been talking among themselves. “I haven’t seen a judge until now!” he shouted.

Take them out,” Sahar said. A security officer opened the cage. It took Louai nearly two minutes to limp to the door. Sahar took a lunch break, then ordered his execution.