Sabri Essid trial, day three: Wife’s chilling testimony on the Yazidi genocide

It’s a world away from the slick propaganda videos of ISIS. Here, in the dock, Sabri Essid – or Belgacem Sabri, as he’s known legally – is just a man staring at his shoes. Around him, the words of the survivors crash, collide, and tear through the hushed silence of the courtroom. This is day three of a historic trial, the first in France where a citizen is being judged for complicity in the genocide of the Yazidi people. And on this Wednesday, it was an unexpected voice that spoke up: that of his own wife.

‘I realised I was the wife of a monster’

For years, she was the one people saw without really noticing. The quiet, compliant young woman who got caught up in the Artigat network, the shadowy Toulouse-based group that sent dozens of French men and women to join the ranks of the Islamic State. Described by her own lawyers as "an obedient girl, beautiful, well-versed in the Quran," she followed her husband to Syria. There, in Raqqa, daily life quickly descended into horror. "I realised I was the wife of a monster by the third day," she said in a flat, emotionless voice. It wasn't a sudden flash of clarity, but a slow and relentless discovery of the brutal machinery of ISIS.

She told her story. The Yazidi slaves crammed into basements, the young girls sold like cattle at the market, the gang rapes that became a regular feature of the emirs' evenings. Sabri Essid wasn't just a foot soldier. He managed the "human stock," took part in the trafficking, and selected women for his comrades. His wife, confined to their apartment, tried to look the other way. Until the day she locked eyes with a Yazidi child on the stairwell. "She was ten, maybe younger. She was naked, covered in bruises. That's when I understood my husband was right at the heart of this system."

Testimony of 'utmost gravity'

The court then heard from three other women. Their words, of the utmost gravity, sent a chill through the room. They weren't the wives of the perpetrators, but the direct victims. One of them, a Yazidi survivor, described the organisation of the caliphate:

• Families torn apart, men executed in front of their loved ones;
• Women and children "gifted" to fighters as spoils of war;
• Daily transfers between Syrian and Iraqi provinces, managed by logisticians like Sabri Essid;
• Forced conversions and systematic rape, all part of a calculated strategy of eradication.

What these accounts lay bare is the French connection to this machine. Because Sabri Essid is not an isolated case. He is a product of the Artigat network, named after the small town in the Lauragais region where, in the early 2000s, a cell managed to radicalise an entire generation right under the noses of intelligence services. It was there that Essid crossed paths with many other French jihadists. A sprawling network that supplied the Islamic State with some of its most zealous operatives.

The stakes of this trial, therefore, go far beyond the case of one man. It's about legally acknowledging French involvement – via its citizens – in the genocide of the Yazidi people. A community that, in 2014, was subjected to a methodical attempt at extermination: more than 5,000 men killed, thousands of women and children enslaved for sexual purposes. Today, as the community slowly rebuilds in Iraqi Kurdistan, the justice system is trying to put words to the unspeakable. "This isn't about revenge," concluded the lawyer for one of the civil parties. "It's a duty of remembrance and humanity."

The verdict isn't expected for several weeks. But one thing is already certain: these three days of hearings have definitively ripped away the mask of a man who, in the eyes of his own wife, is nothing more than a monster.