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The Paris prosecutor requested life imprisonment on Friday for French jihadist Sabri Essid, who is being tried in absentia for his role in the genocide against the Ezidi minority in Syria in the mid-2010s.
Prosecutor Sophie Havar said that Sabri Essid, who was reportedly killed in Syria, was a “key link in the criminal network” that carried out the genocidal policy against the Ezidis. She called on the Paris Criminal Court to convict him of participation in genocide and crimes against humanity, as well as complicity in these crimes.
Essid’s trial in absentia began on Monday in France, marking the first case of its kind before the French judiciary.
Essid was close to the Kouachi brothers, who claimed responsibility for the November 13, 2015 attacks in France, and to Mohamed Merah, who in 2012 killed three soldiers, three children, and a teacher in a Jewish school during a deadly attack in Toulouse and Montauban.
He joined ISIS in the region spanning Iraq and Syria in 2014, and reports indicate that he was killed there in 2018 under unclear circumstances.
However, with no official evidence of his death, Essid is considered a fugitive and is being tried on that basis before a three-judge criminal court without a jury.
The Ezidis are a Kurdish group who follow the Ezidi religion, mainly residing in the Kurdistan Region and around Mosul in Iraq. They suffered attacks and persecution by the terrorist group ISIS, starting on August 3, 2014, forcing mass displacement.
On that day, ISIS fighters attacked the Sinjar area in Iraq, home to around 400,000 Ezidis. Many were killed, detained, or displaced, and fighters forcibly transferred women and children to Syria.
Essid had previously been sentenced in France in 2009 to five years in prison, including one year suspended, for terrorist conspiracy. He is the son of the partner of jihadist Mohamed Merah’s mother. After traveling to Iraq and Syria in early 2014, Essid was joined by his wife, three children, and his stepson from a previous marriage.
In an ISIS video released on March 10, 2015, Essid appeared urging his 12-year-old stepson to execute a Palestinian hostage with a gunshot to the head.
Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)