00:05Hello. You are watching Middle East Matters here on France 24. I'm Nadia Massey. In the
00:11show this week, we look into an historic legal case here in France. A French ISIS member
00:17convicted for his involvement in the genocide of the Yazidi minority in Iraq and in Syria
00:22in 2014. Sabri Yazid was tried in absentia, but nonetheless, campaigners say this is a
00:30victory for justice and a victory for the Yazidi survivors who bravely spoke up to give
00:36their testimony in the court here in Paris. Well, we will look in a moment at the legal
00:42implications of this verdict. But first, my colleague Gabrielle Nadler takes us back more
00:47than a decade to Mosul and Sinjar as the Islamic State group was consolidating its caliphate
00:54to remind us of the violence endured by the Yazidis at the hands of ISIS.
01:02Rehan remembers the day she was kidnapped at 14. An ethnic Yazidi, she was taken by the
01:09Islamic State and sold as a slave here in Mosul. At the crossroads where she was abducted, three
01:15of her eight brothers were killed. They captured us at Hardan's crossroad, then
01:21took us to Umm al-Shababik. And from there, they took us to Tel Afar, to a school there,
01:27then to the Badush prison. The Islamic State group was taking the young women and girls one
01:33by one. When they took us, my brother and I were crying. We were very young. We were crying.
01:42In 2018, Rehan was able to escape from Syria, where she'd been taken, and reached Turkey
01:48on foot. She stayed in hiding with another survivor until she found her brother, Shihab,
01:53on Facebook, and eventually was able to return to Sinjar. Rehan says her story is one of many
02:00others like it.
02:03What happened to me happened to all Yazidi women.
02:06I lost everything, but I came back to life.
02:12The Yazidis are an Iraqi ethnic and religious minority, and are one of the groups who have
02:17been in the region the longest. In August 2014, the Islamic State group began its assault on
02:24the Yazidi people with a massacre in the Sinjar region, leaving thousands dead, and displacing
02:29and capturing community members. A United Nations Commission documented the Islamic State's
02:35ensuing crimes against the Yazidi people. Men were killed in mass executions, or forced
02:40to convert to Islam. Boys were sent into Islamic State training camps. And women and girls,
02:47as young as nine, were sold into sexual slavery, and systematically raped. The UN estimated the
02:54Islamic group killed over 5,000 and abducted over 6,000 Yazidis. As of 2022, about 3,000
03:01Yazidi people were missing, and over 200,000 remained displaced, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
03:07The Islamic State's genocide of the Yazidi people has never been subject to an investigation
03:12by the International Criminal Court. However, in national courts across Europe, most
03:17recently in France, Islamic State members have been convicted of genocide and crimes against
03:22humanity.
03:24Yazidi survivor and activist Nadia Murad, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her efforts
03:30to end sexual violence as a weapon of war, said justice is what survivors want most.
03:35The culture of impunity for perpetrators, that's the most important and needed thing, that the
03:43culture of impunity must, you know, must not be an option. And survivors want their day in
03:51court.
03:52The trials are finally giving the Yazidi people the chance to seek justice, over a decade on.
04:01That's Gabrielle Nadler with our report. And with me now is Clémence Bechtard. She's a lawyer who
04:08represented three Yazidi survivors and eight of their children in this case we're talking about today. Thank you very
04:15much indeed for speaking to us here on the programme.
04:21Look, your three adult clients, they're all women.
04:25Tell us as much as you can a little of their stories and how it is that they ended up
04:31here in France giving testimony.
04:35Well, three of them were abducted, were living in villages in Mount Sinjar and were abducted on the 3rd of
04:45August 2014,
04:47when the genocide began, with their children. They were then held in different villages and then prisons in Mosul,
04:57in Tal Afar, in different places in Iraq, and then separated from their husbands, who were executed. And they were
05:07then sent to Syria,
05:09where they were subjected to sexual slavery for years with their children. They have suffered tremendous amount of violence.
05:17some of them were sold and bought and detained by more than 10 ISIS members. And they finally managed to
05:28escape. And now two of them are living in exile outside of Iraq.
05:34And we can, you know, we can only begin to imagine, given the scale of what these women went through,
05:41how difficult it must have been to speak about that in court.
05:48It is extremely difficult, but for them, justice is necessary. It's at the centre of the reason why they decided
05:59to deliver this testimony.
06:00First of all, at the investigative stage where judges were investigating these crimes. And then in court, two of them
06:08were present in court with their children and testified and confirmed, you know, the horrendous crimes that they had suffered,
06:17including in the hands of one French ISIS member who was tried and convicted last week. It was very important
06:25for them, not only to see justice, to get this conviction.
06:29Of course, it's not, you know, a wider investigation such as it could have been before the International Criminal Court,
06:37for example.
06:37But nonetheless, it is very important for them because for them, the greatest danger is to forget about these crimes,
06:45is to forget what the Yezidi community have suffered.
06:48And it is very important also for them to testify not only in their name, in their name of their
06:55families, of their children who have suffered also with them, but also in the name of the whole Yezidi community.
07:01And as you say, look, this was the trial of one individual, a Frenchman, Sabri Ezeid. For the survivors that
07:10you spoke to, these three women in particular, does it feel now like justice has been done, given that we
07:17are talking about one man and one man who is important to say was tried in absentia, meaning he was
07:23not present in court?
07:25It is a step towards justice, but a significant step. They, of course, aware that, you know, all the suspects
07:35of ISIS who have committed these crimes have not been prosecuted or convicted.
07:43We're far from that. This is only the 15th trial, actually, that is taking place.
07:48It was the first in France, but there are other European jurisdictions who have already organized trials that resulted in
07:56convictions for genocide and crimes against humanity.
07:59But it is nonetheless an important step, also because it is now a new jurisdiction, France, that had never organized
08:06such a trial, that is now considering to organize other trials and to prosecute other French ISIS members.
08:14And for them, it is really essential that this quest for justice continues, because, again, it is also a way
08:20to remember the crimes that were perpetrated and also for them to shed light on the current situation of the
08:28Yazidi community, because all these survivors have not been in their immense majority able to go back to their villages
08:37in the Mount Sinjar.
08:38So there continues to be now a necessity for them to continue to continue to talk about this genocide, about
08:44what has happened and about the consequences also on the whole community.
08:49Clément Spectard, don't go away. I have a few more questions I want to ask you. But before we do,
08:53I'd like to play a clip.
08:56This is from Fahad Shamo Roto. He himself is a Yazidi activist. He's a survivor as well.
09:03He attended the trial that you participated in as the lawyer here.
09:10He spoke to my colleague, Karis Garland, earlier on today about the challenges faced by the survivors, those who are
09:17now in Iraq, in Sinjar, but also some who are here in Europe who say they face challenges with their
09:23asylum applications.
09:24Let's just have a listen to a little of what he said to say.
09:28As now we are approaching for the 12th commemoration of this genocide, Sinjar has had no functioning administration and official
09:36security for 11 years.
09:39And these have kept our people in perpetual uncertainty and instability.
09:47Our people are still waiting, not just for justice or for the over 2,000 women and children remain missing,
09:58but for the condition to live in dignity.
10:01And we are also waiting for a chance to be able to offer our loved one a dignified burial from
10:09over 90 mass grave discovered.
10:12For the past decade, Sinjar has faced blockade policy from Kurdistan regional government, neglected by Iraq and international community.
10:21International community have pledged to protect us and to help us recover and to stabilize our homeland, but in a
10:28state they have funded our life in displacement.
10:32As a result, for 11 years, our children are growing up in the camps.
10:38Families remain separated and many of those who are seeking refuge in European countries are facing rejection of their asylum
10:46application and even deportation from countries like Germany, France and the Netherlands.
10:52If we are to endure and to recover and to thrive, we need the world to fulfill many promises made
11:01to us after 2014.
11:03Isis attempt to eradicate our community and giving up on us would be their victory.
11:11Yezidi has been calling for formation of an international commission to resolve this genocide through an agreement between international community
11:20and Iraqi government so that we can govern our own homeland and we can prevent future genocide.
11:29We've got the testimony there of another survivor, a Yezidi activist, and Clemence Bektat still with me, the lawyer who
11:36worked on the case, who was listening to that.
11:38And Clemence, I don't know whether this affects your clients in particular, but I'm sure you know people in the
11:43community more widely.
11:44And I wondered whether you had any reflections on what we were just hearing there about the fact that there
11:51are apparently Yezidis, he said, even here in France, who face the possibility of deportation.
11:57And is that something you're aware of?
12:02I'm not aware of any individual situation in France of any Yezidi survivor who has been in this situation.
12:10But again, you know, this kind of trial is also a way and this is very important for my clients,
12:17but for Yezidi survivors as a whole to shed light on the current situation again of the Yezidis.
12:24And they need some political support and some mobilization from the international community.
12:28And what this activist was saying is very true.
12:31You know, there is a sense of forgetting by the international community what happened.
12:38This is only a decade ago.
12:40And the fact that despite the tremendous amount of crimes suffered by the Yezidi community, they are not today allowed
12:48to go back to their villages.
12:49Their villages haven't been reconstructed.
12:52There is no political support either from the central Iraqi authorities nor from the Kurdish authorities to allow the Yezidi
12:59to go back to their homes.
13:01And the part of the Yezidi community who is today in exile is only wishing to go back to their
13:09country.
13:09You know, my clients were telling me we're living abroad because for our children, because we don't want to live
13:14in refugee camps, because the living conditions are too hard there.
13:18But our wish is to go back to Sinjar and to be able to continue also and to continue to
13:26transmit the Yezidi identity.
13:28What you have to remember also is that all the cultural places, the temples have been destroyed.
13:33So there's a real threat also on the continuity of the Yezidi identity and practice of religion as such.
13:43Clémence Bechtard, there is more I'd like to ask you, but unfortunately, we're out of time.
13:47I want to thank you very much indeed for your time today.
13:50It's been great to get your thoughts here on Middle East matters.
13:55Thank you very much.
13:57And with that, that's it for the programme this week.
14:00You've been watching Middle East matters here on France 24's Around the World.
14:05queer old.
14:06white white global world…
14:07white
14:08white
14:09white
14:09white
14:10white
14:11white
14:12white
14:14white
14:15white
Comments