France costs ex-wife of prime IS group official with crimes in opposition to humanity | EUROtoday

Issued on: 28/04/2024 – 09:30

1 min

A girl recognized as Sonia M., the previous spouse of the jihadist group’s head of exterior operations Abdelnasser Benyoucef, was charged on March 14, Le Parisien mentioned Saturday.

The Yazidi lady, who was 16 when she was pressured into slavery by Benyoucef, accused Sonia M. of raping her twice and understanding that her husband was raping her, the report mentioned.

The lady, now 25, mentioned she was held for greater than a month in 2015 in Syria, the place she was not allowed to eat, drink or bathe with out Sonia M.’s permission.

Sonia M. denied the allegations in opposition to her in a March 14 interview with French investigators, saying “only one rape” had been dedicated by her former husband.

The teenager “left her room freely, ate what she wanted, went to the toilet when she needed to”, she mentioned in her interview, seen by AFP.

Sonia M.’s lawyer Nabil Boudi slammed the costs as “opportunistic accusations”, saying that prosecutors had been in search of “to make her responsible for the most serious crimes, because the courts have not managed to apprehend the real perpetrators”.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Benyoucef, in response to a supply near the investigation.

France launched an investigation in 2016 into genocide, crimes in opposition to humanity and battle crimes dedicated in opposition to ethnic and spiritual minorities in Iraq and Syria since 2012.

The probe has targeted on crimes suffered by members of the Yazidi and Christian communities in addition to members of the Sheitat tribe, in response to France’s PNAT anti-terror unit.

“The aim is to document these crimes and identify the French perpetrators who belong to the Islamic State organisation,” PNAT advised AFP.

(AFP)