Sonia M, a woman repatriated from Syria and married to an Islamic State emir, is accused in France of crimes against humanity and genocide, as well as allegedly enslaved a teenage girl from the Yezidi minority in Syria.
The young woman, now 25 years old, was just 16 when she was purchased by Abdelnasser Benyousef, also known as “Abu Mutana”, head of IS foreign operations, who ordered the 2015 attack on the Hyper Cacher store in Paris.
This man, for whom an arrest warrant was issued, according to a source with knowledge of the case, was convicted in absentia in France for this attack.
As the newspaper Le Parisien reported, the young Yezidi woman presented herself in February to the Kurdish authorities in Erbil, Iraq, also before a French judge, and spoke about her abduction in 2014 in the mountainous region of Sinjar, where a large part of this minority lived. . .
As she complained, for more than a month in the spring of 2015, she lived in Raqqa, Syria, as a prisoner in Sonia and her husband’s home.
The 25-year-old said she could not drink or eat, nor wash without Sónia’s permission. He also accused her of raping her twice and knowing that her husband was raping her.
The young woman described Sónia as “dominant”, with “great influence” and highlighted that she seemed “satisfied with being in Daesh”, the Arabic acronym for EI.
The teenager ended up leaving the couple’s home about a month later to be sold again. The main cause of this development was Sonia’s jealousy.
“divine command”
Sónia was interrogated on March 14 by the anti-terrorism Public Ministry and denied the accusations, admitting only that her ex-husband raped the young woman “once”.
The teenager “had the freedom to leave her room, eat whatever she wanted, go to the bathroom when she needed to,” she said.
She also assured that she did not have a pistol in her possession, as the young Yezidi man complained.
Sônia stated that her husband “didn’t ask for my opinion”. “He told me that (young Yazidi) would become, I don’t like that word, his slave, that it was a right given to him and that I could not object, that it was a divine order.”
She highlighted that she did not like giving orders and that she took care of the house alone when her husband was away.
Initially, in 2022, a judge accused Sónia of complicity, but now she is considered the main suspect of acts of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity”.
The case raises many challenges, as a case for war crimes committed in Syria will be tried in France.
Sonia was “dismissed due to these accusations”, assured her lawyer Nabil Budi. He emphasized that her client was truly remorseful, as “evidenced by her statements in several terrorism trials.”
If the judge finally requests a trial against Sónia, it will be “the first time that a repatriated woman (from Syria) will be tried for crimes against humanity”, highlighted Romain Ruiz, Yezidi’s lawyer.
Sources: APE-MPE-AFP