Sabri Essid convicted in absentia France for genocide against Yezidis: CIJA testified on IS enslavement policies

On Friday 20 March, Sabri Essid was convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity against the Yezidis. The Cour de Assises in Paris found Essid guilty of direct perpetration of genocide and crimes against humanity committed against two Yezidi women and children in Syria. He was also convicted of complicity in genocide for participating in the transfer of an enslaved Yezidi woman and her children in Syria.

Presiding judge Marc Sommerer noted that “Essid became part of the criminal network repeatedly buying and reselling a very large number of Yezidi victims” and that IS had specifically targeted the Yezidi minority for its religious beliefs.

An expert from the Commission for International Justice and Accountability testified at length to the court, alongside the detailed testimony of two Yezidi victim plaintiffs and civil parties. The expert evidence focused on IS enslavement policies and general modus operandi, drawing on evidence collected by CIJA’s Syrian and Iraqi investigators since 2014 and analysed in a 440-page legal brief on the Enslavement of Women and Children by Islamic State in Northern Iraq and Syria.

Using IS internal documents, the testimony demonstrated that IS operated a highly organised, well-regulated slave trade, where the extermination and enslavement of ‘non-believing peoples’  such as the Yezidis was one of the criminal means through which IS sought to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria and implementing its fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia.

Based on detailed analysis, and at least 12 IS documents which establish IS enslavement policy, the expert outlined five distinct steps of the IS criminal plan:

(i)                  Massive military operations included the Yezidi homeland in Sinjar as well as other ethnic minorities;

(ii)                Detention and separation of women and children and their categorisation into groups;

(iii)              Systematic distribution of women and girls to individual slave owners as sabaya (so-called female spoils of war);

(iv)              Extensive regulation of the slave trade across the IS military and administrative apparatus between 2014 and at least October 2017;

(v)                Complete control exercised by IS members over the sexual activities and reproduction of enslaved women and children.

At the conclusion of the five-day trial, Essid was convicted of direct perpetration of genocide of serious bodily or mental harm as well as crimes against humanity of enslavement, imprisonment, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts carried out against two Yezidi women and their children. He was also convicted for complicity for the participation in the transfer of a Yezidi woman and her children from one site of enslavement to another which amounted to genocide of serious bodily or mental harm.

This judgment marks France’s first genocide conviction for crimes committed against the Yezidis by IS. It follows other recent convictions of IS members for genocide against Yezidis, including of Taha al-J. in Germany and Lina Ishaq in Sweden. CIJA supported each of these cases.