ISIS Member Convicted In Landmark Yazidi Genocide Trial
(ANALYSIS) A court in Paris on March 20 found a French man, Sabri Essid (also known as Abu Dojanah al-Faransi), guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in crimes against the Yazidis, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.
Sabri Essid, presumed dead, was a member of Daesh (a group also known as ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State).
Essid became part of the organization, repeatedly buying and reselling a large number of Yazidi victims. He is also said to have subjected them to horrific treatment, including sexual abuse, starvation and dehydration. While Essid is said to have been killed in 2018, there is no proof of his death. For this reason, he was tried in absentia.
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Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority community in Iraq, were specifically targeted for annihilation by Daesh, which considered them infidels and devil worshipers and so justified their destruction. The deadly terrorist organization gained its notoriety with its video propaganda portraying beheadings, burning people in cages and throwing them from high buildings.
On Aug. 3, 2014, Daesh attacked Yazidis in Sinjar, abducting thousands of women and girls to turn them into sex slaves, boys to turn them into child soldiers and killing men and the elderly.
Days later, the group forced some 120,000 Christian minorities to flee their ancestral land. To this day, some 2,500 Yazidi women and children are still missing, with no international efforts to locate and rescue them. The majority of mass graves have not been exhumed, preventing families from learning the fate of their loved ones and affording them a dignified burial. Some 12 years after the attack on Sinjar, very little has been done to ensure that Daesh fighters are investigated and brought to justice for their involvement in international crimes.
In Iraq, where the majority of the crimes were perpetrated, such prosecutions for international crimes are not possible. This is because the country does not have effective legislation criminalizing international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity.
Indeed, Iraq has seen only trials of Daesh fighters for their membership in terror organizations. Such trials exclude the need to engage victims and survivors — their testimonies are irrelevant to establishing the elements of the crime — they are also prevented from facing the perpetrator and seeking justice.
Other countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, among others, have been more proactive in ensuring that Daesh members, whether their citizens or not, were investigated and prosecuted, under the principle of extraterritorial and universal jurisdictions. The principle enables domestic courts to prosecute international crimes.
A German court convicted an Iraqi Daesh member for his involvement in the Yazidi genocide, despite no nexus between the perpetrator, the victim, or the crime and Germany. So far, Germany has secured some three convictions for genocide and five for crimes against humanity for crimes committed against the Yazidi people.
The case of Sabri Essid was the first prosecution of a Daesh member in France for involvement in genocide. During the five-day trials, the Paris court has heard from several experts, surviving victims of the crimes committed by Essid. Among others, one of the survivors testified how Essid raped her every day, including in front of her 2-year-old child.
While Essid is presumed dead, there is no proof of this death. Indeed, some of the other Daesh members presumed dead were later found alive and well. If Sabri Essid is found alive, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
However, the trial was more than establishing Essid’s criminal responsibility for the crimes. It provided Yazidi survivors with an opportunity to tell their stories, have their testimonies recorded, and become part of the judgment and national history.
Trials, such as those conducted across Europe, are key to ensuring justice and accountability for the horrific atrocities committed by Daesh against ethno-religious communities in Iraq and Syria. However, for now, such trials are still sparse in comparison to the significant number of Daesh members at large.
For example, in the U.K., a Parliamentary inquiry of the Joint Committee on Human Rights established that while some 400 British Daesh members returned to the U.K. after their rampage in the Middle East, Britain secured only 32 convictions and this for terror-related offenses only.
None of the 400 have been prosecuted and convicted for their involvement in international crimes such as religious persecution, crimes against humanity or genocide. Again, this denies the victims/survivors their day in court, having their testimonies recorded and preserved as part of the process.
The Daesh atrocities were unique in that the terror organization was able to recruit thousands of foreign fighters from across the world, including from the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the U.S. and many more.
It is now our shared responsibility to investigate and bring to account those responsible. This is to punish them for their crimes, but also, and even more importantly, to ensure that survivors can tell their stories and use justice as a means of preventing similar atrocities in the future.
Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab is a human rights advocate, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. She is on X @EwelinaUO.