An investigating judge on Tuesday, September 24, ordered a trial for genocide and crimes against humanity against Sonia Mejri, a “ghost” from Syria and former wife of an emir of the Islamic State group (IS), Agence France-Presse (AFP) has learned.
Sonia Mejri, born in the south of France and 35 years old, is suspected of having enslaved a Yazidi teenager in Syria in the spring of 2015, while living with her ex-husband, Abdelnasser Benyoucef, considered one of the creators, under the name Abu Al-Mouthana, of the IS external operations cell. He is presumed dead, but an arrest warrant is out for him.
Sonia Mejri’s lawyer, who has contested the allegations against her client throughout the investigation, was not immediately available. An investigating judge also ordered Mr. Benyoucef to be prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in these crimes, as well as for leading a criminal terrorist association.
listen also Islamic State: how French justice judges the “ghosts”
A “convinced repentant,” according to her lawyer
According to the indictment to which AFP had access, the judge ordered that the former couple be tried before a specially commissioned criminal court for slavery, imprisonment, torture, rape or complicity in rape, persecution and inhuman acts committed against this Yazidi teenager. Among these inhuman acts, the order highlights “Forced conversion or the couple’s attempt to achieve it”as “Ablutions after rape” attributed to Mr. Benyoucef about the teenager.
The latter has already been convicted in absentia in France for the failed Villejuif attack in 2015. He is presumed to have been killed in 2016 in the Syrian-Iraqi zone by air strikes.
Sonia Mejri will also be arraigned on charges of participation in a terrorist criminal association. Imprisoned upon her return from Syria, she had testified during trials for terrorist crimes, testimony that made her a “Convinced repentant”his advisor, Nabil Boudi, assured AFP in May.
The damning investigations are based in particular on the testimony of a Yazidi woman, now 25, who was 16 when she was bought by Abdelnasser Benyoucef. According to elements of the investigation, which AFP has seen, this woman denounced mistreatment in a diary. She said she had been held captive for more than a month in the spring of 2015 in Syria, and that she could not drink, eat or shower without Sonia Mejri’s permission. She also accused the latter of having raped her twice and of having known that her husband was raping her.
