Germany: ISIS jihadist tried for genocide against Yazidis

Text by: Pascal Thibaut Follow

It is a legal first. A trial against an alleged member of the Islamic State organization accused of genocide against the Yazidi minority opened in Frankfurt, Germany this Friday morning. This ethno-religious minority was particularly persecuted by the jihadists who reduced their wives to sexual slavery, forcibly recruited child soldiers and killed hundreds of men.

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With our correspondent in Berlin,

The five-year-old girl was tied outside the bars of a window to punish her for defiling her bed. By fifty degrees in the shade, she died of thirst in horrible suffering. It was bought in 2015 with his mother by the accused, a 37-year-old Iraqi man, an alleged member of the Islamic State organization.

The man lived with a German woman who had been tried in Munich for a year for the murder of the child. The mother of the latter testified and confirmed the ordeal suffered during this detention with her daughter.

Taha al-J. is accused by the Frankfurt court not only of the murder of little Rania but also of genocide against the Yazidi minority. Proving that the alleged member of the Islamic State organization was the perpetrator of such a mass crime will not be easy for German judges who will have to prove that the will to destroy the Yazidi minority was proven. Gathering evidence and testimonies in Iraq will be very difficult for the magistrates.

If they succeed, a genocide conviction in a few months would constitute a legal basis for further prosecutions of members of the Islamic State organization .

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• Germany
• Terrorism
• Justice
• EI