San Francisco Frontiers - Yazidi woman tells French court of rape, slavery and escape from IS

The 32-year-old spoke in a Paris tribunal as part of the trial of French jihadist Sabri Essid, who is being prosecuted in absentia on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in these crimes.

It is the first case in France to address atrocities committed against the Yazidi minority during the IS campaign in the Middle East.

Essid is presumed to have been killed in 2018, but without proof of his death he is being tried in absentia charged with crimes committed between 2014 and 2016.

The woman, whose name AFP is withholding to protect her privacy, spent about two-and-a-half years in the hands of IS fighters.

She looked frail against the imposing wood panelling of the Paris courthouse, as the court listened to her recount the harrowing ordeal of her captivity in Syria in the mid-2010s in a low voice.

Before the jihadists came, "we weren't a very wealthy family, but we were happy," she said, speaking through an interpreter.

That life ended in August 2014, when IS swept over the Sinjar Mountains, the historic homeland of the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Jihadists massacred thousands of Yazidi men, abducted and indoctrinated children, and captured thousands of women.

IS regarded the Yazidis -- followers of a non-Muslim monotheistic faith -- as heretics. The woman said that she was passed from one captor to another and spent around 40 days under Essid's control.

The woman was captured along with her two-year-old daughter and her husband.

The family stayed together for several months, moved repeatedly from one town to another, until the jihadists eventually separated her from her husband.

She was taken with other Yazidi women and her daughter to the IS stronghold of Raqqa and then to the region of Deir Ezzor.

One day, she was taken with five other women to a market, with jihadists telling them to "put on our finest clothes".

"Then we were lined up in a public square," she told investigators, according to a statement read out in court. "They called us by our first names, and then we had to parade in front of men. We were to be sold as sex slaves."

- 'Sold as sex slaves' -

Two men, including Essid, wanted to buy her. She and her daughter were eventually sold to a Saudi man, who told her he had sold his gun and car to purchase her.

The man, who was married, raped her every other day. Several months later, the Saudi sold her to Essid.

The Frenchman raped her daily. He took pills to boost his sexual performance.

"It was very painful for me," the woman said, head bowed.

He also wanted to separate her from her daughter, but she slashed her own arm with a knife to stop him.

She remained in his hands for 40 days, until he took her to a beauty salon, where she was made to wear a red sequin dress with a low neckline and put on make-up.

The aim was to "prepare me and take photos" to sell her again.

In total, she said she had eight "owners".

She took advantage of her last captor's absence, who had gone off to fight, to flee with another Yazidi woman and her daughter.

Concealed under a niqab, she took a taxi and then walked through the night to reach a post manned by Kurdish forces. She never saw her husband again.

After spending several months in Iraq with her parents, she eventually left the country with her daughter.

"I had no choice," she said. "It's for my daughter's future."

Presiding judge Marc Sommerer said that he had overseen several trials for crimes against humanity.

"But what you've just told us," he said, "I've never heard before."

M.Hill--SFF