A French jihadist was sentenced to life in jail on Friday, March 20, over Islamic State group atrocities against Iraq's Yazidi minority, the first case in France to tackle the issue. A Paris criminal court found Sabri Essid guilty in absentia of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in the crimes, committed between 2014 and 2016 when the jihadists occupied swathes of northern Syria and Iraq.
"Sabri Essid took part in the genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State," presiding judge Marc Sommerer told the court. "[He] became part of the criminal network repeatedly buying and reselling a very large number of Yazidi victims," he continued, saying the court judged that the group had "specifically targeted" the Yazidi minority for its religious beliefs.
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 earlier told the court in Paris. The IS group viewed the Yazidis, who follow a non-Muslim monotheistic faith, as heretics.
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Yazidi genocide trial: Sabri Essid, the 'monster' husband who became a slave owner
