FRANCE charged the ex-wife of an Islamic State official with crimes once morest humanity over the alleged enslavement of a teenage Yazidi girl in Syria, French media reported.
A woman identified as Sonia M, the ex-wife of the jihadist group’s head of external operations Abdelnasser Benyoucef, was charged on March 14, Le Parisien reported Saturday.
Yazidi, 16, when she was forced into slavery by Benyoucef, accused Sonia M of raping her twice and knew her husband was raping her, the report said.
The woman, now 25, said she was detained for more than a month in 2015 in Syria. Where he is not allowed to eat, drink or bathe without Sonia M’s permission.
Sonia M denied the allegations once morest her in a March 14 interview with French investigators, saying “only one rape” was committed by her ex-husband.
The teenager “leave his room freely, eats what he wants, goes to the toilet when he needs to”, he said in his interview, seen by AFP.
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Sonia M’s lawyer, Nabil Boudi, slammed the accusations as “opportunistic accusations”, saying prosecutors were seeking “to make her responsible for the most serious crimes, as the courts have not succeeded in catching the true perpetrators”.
An arrest warrant has been issued for Benyoucef, according to sources close to the investigation.
France began an investigation in 2016 into genocide, crimes once morest humanity and war crimes committed once morest ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria since 2012.
The investigation focused on crimes experienced by members of the Yazidi and Christian communities as well as members of the Sheitat tribe, according to France’s PNAT anti-terrorism unit.
“The aim is to document these crimes and identify French perpetrators who are members of the Islamic State organization,” PNAT told AFP. (AFP/Z-3)
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