The Brussels Criminal Court sentenced Belgian ISIS member Sammy Djedou to life imprisonment on Friday for committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq between August 2, 2014, and April 14, 2019.
The court also convicted him of crimes against humanity for the rape and sexual slavery of three Yazidi women between 2014 and 2016.
The court issued an immediate arrest warrant for Djedou. Although there was reliable information that Djedou had died in 2016, the trial proceeded in his absence.
The reason for this decision was explained as preserving the right to appeal if the defendant appears and the moral–symbolic importance of the trial.
Leading role in ISIS
Djedou was born in Brussels in 1989 to a Belgian mother and an Ivorian father. He converted to Islam as a teenager and traveled to Syria in October 2012 to join ISIS. According to international investigators, he rose through the ranks of the group and later took on a leadership role in the external operations department—the unit that planned attacks in Europe, among other things. In 2021, Djedou was sentenced to 13 years in prison in Belgium for leading a terrorist organization—also in absentia.
He enslaved three Yazidi women aged 16, 17, and 18 at the time
The ruling found no mitigating circumstances for the defendant. The court pointed to ISIS’ “deadly ideology” and religious-based discrimination, stating that the attacks against the Yazidis were a serious blow to fundamental human values.
It was recorded that Djedou enslaved three Yazidi women, aged 16, 17, and 18 at the time, and subjected them to systematic sexual violence. Two women were held in his home in Raqqa for two years, while the third woman was held captive for several months before being sold to another ISIS member.
The fourth country to recognize the Yazidi genocide
With the ruling of the Brussels Criminal Court, Belgium became the fourth country to recognize the genocide committed against the Yazidis by ISIS between 2014 and 2019 through legal proceedings. Following its onslaught on Shengal on August 3, 2014, ISIS turned the enslavement of Yazidi women into a systematic strategy of extermination.