Sonia M., a returnee from Syria and former wife of a head of external operations of the Islamic State, was indicted in France for crimes against humanity and genocide, suspected of having reduced a minor Yazidi into slavery in Syria, judicial sources close to the case said on Saturday.
The civil party, now aged 25, was 16 when she was bought by Abdelnasser Benyoucef, alias “Abou Moutana”. This man allegedly claimed to be one of the sponsors of the Hyper Cacher attack in Paris in 2015, according to Sonia M.
According to elements of the investigation revealed on Saturday by the daily Le Parisien and of which AFP was aware, the Yezidi denounced a daily newspaper of mistreatment during a hearing in Erbil (Iraq) last February.
She claims to have been confined for more than a month in spring 2015. She says that she could not drink, eat or shower without the authorization of Sonia M. She accuses the latter of having assaulted her twice. times and to have been aware that her husband was raping her.
Questioned and charged on March 14 by an anti-terrorism investigating judge, Sonia M. denied having committed any abuse and denounced “a single rape” of her former husband. The teenager “left her room freely, ate what she wanted, went to the toilet when she needed”, she said according to her interrogation which AFP was aware of. She also claimed that she did not carry a pistol, as the Yazidi recounts.
Kidnapped in August 2014 in Iraq, the teenager was sold to several jihadist families.
Sonia M. claimed that her husband had not “asked her opinion”. “He told me that it was going to be, I don’t like this word, his slave, that it was a right that had been granted to him and that I had no right to contradict him, that it was a divine order. She assured that she did not like giving orders and did the cleaning herself when her husband was away.
The investigating judge, who had first implicated her as an accomplice in September 2022 according to a judicial Source, finally indicted her as the perpetrator, in accordance with the requisitions of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat).
If, at the end of the judicial investigation, Sonia M. is sent back to court, “this first trial of a ghost for crimes against humanity will test France’s capacity to judge war crimes committed in Syria,” said Mr. Romain Ruiz, lawyer for the Yazidi.
