A French jihadist is being tried in absentia in Paris over Islamic State (IS) crimes committed against the Yazidi minority in the Middle East, with prosecutors calling for a life sentence.
Sabri Essid, born in 1984, joined IS in Syria in 2014 and is presumed to have died in 2018. In the absence of confirmed proof of death, French courts have proceeded with the case. He faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and complicity in crimes committed between 2014 and 2016.
On Friday, prosecutors described Essid as “a key link in the criminal chain” behind efforts to destroy the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi community.
Essid is accused of purchasing Yazidi women in slave markets, subjecting them to repeated rape, and depriving them of food and water. IS classified the Yazidis—followers of a non-Muslim monotheistic faith—as heretics.
In 2014, IS seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq and declared a so-called caliphate. During its rule, thousands of Yazidi men were killed in Iraq’s Sinjar province, while women and girls were abducted, trafficked into Syria, and systematically abused by jihadists.
United Nations investigators have formally recognised these atrocities as genocide.
