A COURT is due today to issue a verdict in a trial of a woman accused of slashing two people in the name of the Islamic State group in an upscale shop in normally tranquil Switzerland.

Prosecutors have called for the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to be sentenced to 14 years for “terrorism”, but asked that the sentence be suspended and the woman be committed to a closed treatment facility for as long as she is deemed a threat.

The court is due to start reading its verdict on today at 10am (0800 GMT).

The 29-year-old woman’s mental state is at the heart of the trial at Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona, in the Italian-speaking Ticino region where the attack occurred.

The attack, which did not result in fatalities, took place on November 24, 2020 in the plush Manor department store in Lugano, southern Switzerland.

According to the Office of the Attorney-General’s indictment, the accused “acted wilfully and with particular ruthlessness”, shouted “Allahu akbar (God is greatest)” several times and “I will avenge the Prophet Mohammed”, and declared “I am here for IS”, the Islamic State jihadist group.

During the trial, the court has heard that the woman has been in contact with psychologists and psychiatrists since childhood, with two experts testifying that she suffers from a range of psychological disorders.

Her lawyers argue the accused’s psychological disorders mean the attack could not be considered a “terrorist act” because the woman lived in a fantasy world.

When questioned during the trial, the woman showed no remorse, telling the court: “If I could go back, I would do it better.”

One of the two victims suffered a serious neck injury. She is attending the trial and is a civil party in the case, claiming 440,000 Swiss francs (about RM2 million).

The second sustained wounds on one hand and managed, with others, to control the assailant until the police arrived.

The suspect is primarily charged with attempted murder and violation of laws against association with Al-Qaeda, IS and related Islamist groups.

She is also charged with repeated unlawful prostitution between 2017 and 2020.

The daughter of a Swiss father and a Serbian mother, her adolescence was marked by anorexia and she did not attend secondary school.

Aged 19, she married a man of Afghan origin and converted to Islam. The pair divorced last year.

After falling in love over social media in 2017 with a jihadist in Syria, she attempted to travel to meet him, but was stopped by Turkish authorities at the Syrian border and sent back to Switzerland where she was admitted to a psychiatric clinic, police said. – AFP, September 19, 2022.