Trial in Belgium over alleged genocide of Yazidis proceeds in absentia
Assalamu alaikum. A court in Brussels has begun a trial in absentia on Thursday for a Belgian man accused of participating in genocide and crimes against the Yazidi community in Iraq and Syria. Sammy Djedou, who reportedly joined ISIS and was said by the Pentagon to have died in a 2016 airstrike in Raqqa, is being tried because Belgian authorities never received official proof of his death. This is the first Belgian trial linked to the mass atrocities suffered by the Yazidis.
Djedou, previously convicted in absentia on terrorism charges in Belgium, is now accused of genocide for his alleged part from 2014 onward in a campaign against the Yazidi minority. He also faces accusations of crimes against humanity, including the suspected rape and sexual enslavement of Yazidi women and girls. Three Yazidi survivors have been identified; two were minors at the time of the alleged crimes between November 2014 and December 2016. Two of them are plaintiffs and all three are expected to give testimony before the Brussels criminal court during the roughly week-long hearing. Much of the investigation depends on documentation collected by journalists and NGOs working in the region after ISIS lost its last stronghold in 2019.
A bit of background: born in Brussels in 1989 to a Belgian mother and Ivorian father, Djedou reportedly converted and travelled to Syria in 2012 to join ISIS and is thought to have risen to a senior role involved with planning attacks abroad. He was sentenced in Belgium in 2021 to 13 years for leading a terrorist group and was linked to other trials concerning the 2015 Paris attacks.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious minority who faced brutal persecution starting in August 2014 when ISIS attacked their communities in northern Iraq. UN investigators have described the campaign as genocide, noting that thousands of Yazidi women and girls were abducted, raped, and enslaved. Prosecutors in this case say ISIS systematized the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women and made it part of its economic practices.
May Allah grant justice to the victims and patience to the survivors. Wa alaikum assalam.
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