Facts
In August 2014, ISIS fighters invaded Mount Sinjar, the stronghold of the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority in northern Iraq. Thousands were killed and thousands of women and teenage girls were kidnapped and sexually enslaved in Iraq and Syria.
Sonia Mejri allegedly left France for Syria in 2014.
Her husband, Abdelnasser Benyoucef, an eminent member of ISIS, allegedly left France for Syria in 2013.
They are both accused of having enslaved a young Yazidi woman in 2015.
Procedure
On 28 January 2020, Sonia Mejri was charged while under investigation (mis en examen) for terrorism charges, before the investigation was extended to include charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
On 7 February 2024, the Yazidi victim was heard by the investigative judges. She then became a civil party in the case.
On 24 September 2024, the investigative judges issued their final order to send Sonia Mejri and Abdelnasser Benyoucef to trial on the charges of serious bodily and mental harm constituting genocide; enslavement, imprisonment, torture, persecution and other inhumane acts constituting crimes against humanity; and complicity in these crimes. Sonia Mejri appealed this order.
On 22 January 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal cancelled the charges against Sonia Mejri of genocide and crimes against humanity as a direct perpetrator and sent her to trial for complicity in rapes constituting crimes against humanity and participation in a terrorist group.
On 7 May 2025, the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) asked the Paris Court of Appeal to re-examine the genocide charges against Sonia Mejri, which it had quashed. The Court of Cassation ruled that article 211-1 of the French Penal Code does not require the perpetrator to have acted against several people for the crime of genocide to be constituted. It is sufficient that the act of which he is accused was committed in execution of a concerted plan aimed at the whole or partial destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, or determined on the basis of any other arbitrary criterion.