\n A Yazidi woman who was held as a sex slave by the Islamic State group testified Thursday before a French court, describing in stark detail the horrors she endured under jihadist captivity.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 32-year-old spoke in a Paris tribunal as part of the trial of French jihadist Sabri Essid, who is being prosecuted in absentia on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in these crimes.\n<\/p>\n
\n It is the first case in France to address atrocities committed against the Yazidi minority during the IS campaign in the Middle East.\n<\/p>\n
\n Essid is presumed to have been killed in 2018, but without proof of his death he is being tried in absentia charged with crimes committed between 2014 and 2016.\n<\/p>\n
\n The woman, whose name AFP is withholding to protect her privacy, spent about two-and-a-half years in the hands of IS fighters.\n<\/p>\n
\n She looked frail against the imposing wood panelling of the Paris courthouse, as the court listened to her recount the harrowing ordeal of her captivity in Syria in the mid-2010s in a low voice.\n<\/p>\n
\n Before the jihadists came, \"we weren't a very wealthy family, but we were happy,\" she said, speaking through an interpreter.\n<\/p>\n
\n That life ended in August 2014, when IS swept over the Sinjar Mountains, the historic homeland of the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Jihadists massacred thousands of Yazidi men, abducted and indoctrinated children, and captured thousands of women.\n<\/p>\n
\n IS regarded the Yazidis -- followers of a non-Muslim monotheistic faith -- as heretics. The woman said that she was passed from one captor to another and spent around 40 days under Essid's control.\n<\/p>\n
\n The woman was captured along with her two-year-old daughter and her husband.\n<\/p>\n
\n The family stayed together for several months, moved repeatedly from one town to another, until the jihadists eventually separated her from her husband.\n<\/p>\n
\n She was taken with other Yazidi women and her daughter to the IS stronghold of Raqqa and then to the region of Deir Ezzor.\n<\/p>\n
\n One day, she was taken with five other women to a market, with jihadists telling them to \"put on our finest clothes\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Then we were lined up in a public square,\" she told investigators, according to a statement read out in court. \"They called us by our first names, and then we had to parade in front of men. We were to be sold as sex slaves.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Sold as sex slaves' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Two men, including Essid, wanted to buy her. She and her daughter were eventually sold to a Saudi man, who told her he had sold his gun and car to purchase her.\n<\/p>\n
\n The man, who was married, raped her every other day. Several months later, the Saudi sold her to Essid.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Frenchman raped her daily. He took pills to boost his sexual performance.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It was very painful for me,\" the woman said, head bowed.\n<\/p>\n
\n He also wanted to separate her from her daughter, but she slashed her own arm with a knife to stop him.\n<\/p>\n
\n She remained in his hands for 40 days, until he took her to a beauty salon, where she was made to wear a red sequin dress with a low neckline and put on make-up.\n<\/p>\n
\n The aim was to \"prepare me and take photos\" to sell her again.\n<\/p>\n
\n In total, she said she had eight \"owners\".\n<\/p>\n
\n She took advantage of her last captor's absence, who had gone off to fight, to flee with another Yazidi woman and her daughter.\n<\/p>\n
\n Concealed under a niqab, she took a taxi and then walked through the night to reach a post manned by Kurdish forces. She never saw her husband again.\n<\/p>\n
\n After spending several months in Iraq with her parents, she eventually left the country with her daughter.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I had no choice,\" she said. \"It's for my daughter's future.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Presiding judge Marc Sommerer said that he had overseen several trials for crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"But what you've just told us,\" he said, \"I've never heard before.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Yazidi woman who was held as a sex slave by the Islamic State group testified Thursday before a French court, describing in stark detail the horrors she endured under jihadist captivity. The 32-year-old spoke in a Paris tribunal as part of the trial of French jihadist Sabri Essid, who is being prosecuted in absentia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-156731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n