A French jihadist presumed dead is to be tried in absentia Monday accused of "genocide" in the first such trial in France over Islamic State group crimes against the Yazidi minority in the Middle East.
IS seized large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a so-called "caliphate" there.
In August of that year, they murdered thousands of Yazidi men in Iraq's Sinjar province, and took into Syria thousands of women and girls to sell them in markets as sex slaves to be abused by jihadists from around the world. UN investigators have since qualified these actions as "genocide".
Sabri Essid, a Frenchman born in 1984 and who joined IS in Syria in 2014, has been accused of buying several Yazidi women at markets and then repeatedly raping them, as well as depriving them of water and food.
He is presumed to have been killed in 2018, but without proof of his death, he is to be tried in absentia on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in these crimes, committed between 2014 and 2016.
Three women from the Yazidi community, a Kurdish-speaking minority who practise a pre-Islamic faith, are civil parties in the trial, with two expected to take the stand.
"Given that in the past Islamic State fighters believed to be dead have resurfaced, it is essential that this trial take place," said Patrick Baudouin, a lawyer for the Human Rights League, a French rights organisation.
Attorney Clemence Bectarte, who represents the three Yazidi women and their eight children, said the trial must "provide another reading of IS crimes", usually tried in France as terrorist offences.
"It is essential that it shed light on the particularly grave abuses committed against civilian populations, and in particular the genocidal policy implemented against the Yazidi population," she said.
- Other European rulings -
After Essid headed to Syria, his wife, their three children and her son from a previous relationship joined him.
In an IS propaganda video released in 2015, Essid is seen pushing his 12-year-old stepson to execute a Palestinian hostage with a bullet to the head.
His wife, who has been jailed since returning to France, is to testify at the trial, which is set to last until Friday.
A German court in 2021 issued the first ruling worldwide to recognise crimes against the Yazidi community as "genocide".
It sentenced an Iraqi man to life in jail after prosecutors said he and his then-wife "purchased" a Yazidi woman and child as household "slaves" while living in the then-IS-occupied Iraqi city of Mosul in 2015.
He was accused of chaining the five-year-old girl outdoors in heat of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) as a punishment for wetting her mattress, leading her to die of thirst.
In another such ruling, a Swedish court last month convicted a 52-year-old of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
She was accused of keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at home in Syria in 2015.
In Belgium, a court last year found a Belgian jihadist -- presumed killed in a 2016 air strike -- guilty of genocide for the rape and sexual enslavement of Yazidi women.
US-backed forces eventually defeated the IS proto-state in 2019, though isolated cells still operate in the Syrian desert.
Hussein Qaidi, who heads the Kidnapped Yazidi Rescue Office, last year told AFP IS had abducted 6,416 Yazidis, more than half of whom had since been rescued.
