In a landmark judicial ruling, a French court has delivered the nation’s first conviction for genocide committed against Iraq’s Yazidi minority by Islamic State operatives. The Paris Assizes Court sentenced Sabri Essid to life imprisonment in absentia on Friday after finding him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and complicity in systematic atrocities.
The court established that Essid, who joined IS in Syria in 2014, actively participated in the jihadist network’s genocidal campaign against the Yazidi religious minority between 2014 and 2016. Presiding Judge Marc Sommerer declared that Essid had become “part of the criminal network repeatedly buying and reselling a very large number of Yazidi victims,” specifically targeting them for their religious beliefs.
Evidence presented during the trial detailed how Essid purchased multiple Yazidi women at slave markets, subjected them to repeated rape, and deprived them of basic necessities including food and water. The Islamic State, which considered the pre-Islamic faith of Yazidis heretical, systematically murdered thousands of Yazidi men in Iraq’s Sinjar province in August 2014 while abducting women and girls for sexual slavery.
The trial gained profound emotional weight when a Yazidi survivor provided harrowing testimony describing daily rapes under Essid’s captivity before being resold to six other men. Judge Sommerer noted that despite overseeing numerous crimes against humanity cases, he had “never heard before” the level of atrocities endured by the witness.
Essid, known in Syria as Abu Dojanah al-Faransi and presumed killed in 2018, was closely associated with the Clain brothers who claimed responsibility for the 2015 Paris attacks. His wife remains imprisoned in France after returning from Syria, where their family had joined Essid in 2014.
This verdict aligns with growing international judicial actions regarding IS crimes against Yazidis, including Germany’s 2021 genocide conviction and Sweden’s recent conviction of a woman for keeping Yazidi slaves. United Nations investigators have formally classified the systematic persecution of Yazidis as genocide.