A French jihadist tried in absentia over Islamic State group crimes against the Yazidi minority in the Middle East should be jailed for life, Paris prosecutors said on Friday, March 20. The trial of Sabri Essid, a Frenchman born in 1984, who joined IS in Syria in 2014, is the first of its kind in France.
Essid was "a key link in the criminal chain" that sought to annihilate the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi ethnic and religious minority community, prosecutor Sophie Havard told the court in Paris. The IS group viewed the Yazidis, who follow a non-Muslim monotheistic faith, as heretics.
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'For sale, 5-year-old child, docile and calm': Yazidi genocide trial dives into horrors of IS
The Frenchman is presumed to have been killed in 2018. Yet, as there is no proof of his death, he is being tried in absentia on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in these crimes, which were committed between 2014 and 2016.
