BRUSSELS: A Brussels court on Thursday found a Belgian militant-- presumed killed in a 2016 airstrike — guilty of genocide against the Yazidi minority in Iraq and Syria.
Sammy Djedou, a former fighter with the Daesh group, was reported by the Pentagon to have been killed in Raqqa, Syria.
Belgian authorities never received formal confirmation of his death, and opted to prosecute him in absentia, in the country’s first trial related to mass crimes against the Yazidis.
Djedou, previously convicted in absentia on Belgian terrorism charges, was found guilty of “genocide” for his role from 2014 onwards in an Daesh campaign to exterminate the minority group.
He was also found guilty of “crimes against humanity” for the rape and sexual enslavement of Yazidi women.
Two of Djedou’s Yazidi victims testified about their ordeal at the trial.
Olivia Venet, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the case “historic” for Belgium — the country that provided the most foreign fighters to Daesh per head of population.
Other countries in Europe have already prosecuted those accused of genocide against the Yazidis.
A Swedish court in February sentenced a 52-year-old woman to 12 years in prison on genocide charges for keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking minority who practice a pre-Islamic faith, had primarily settled in northern Iraq before suffering mass persecution by Daesh from August 2014.
Thousands fled as the militants launched brutal attacks in a campaign that UN investigators have qualified as genocide.
According to the United Nations, thousands of Yazidi women and girls were subjected to rape, abduction, and inhumane treatment including slavery.
Born in Brussels in August 1989 to a Belgian mother and Ivorian father, Djedou converted to Islam at age 15 and left for Syria in October 2012 to join Daesh, according to the investigators.
He is later believed to have become a senior figure in the group’s external operations unit, tasked with planning attacks in Europe.
In 2021, he was sentenced in Belgium to 13 years in prison for leading a terrorist group.
He was also targeted in a 2022 trial into support networks behind the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives. He was convicted in that case but received no prison sentence.
Belgian court finds militant guilty over Yazidi genocide
https://arab.news/mpg9f
Belgian court finds militant guilty over Yazidi genocide
- Sammy Djedou, a former Daesh fighter, was reported by the Pentagon to have been killed in Syria
- Djedou, previously convicted in absentia on Belgian terrorism charges, was found guilty of “genocide“
Pakistani Taliban kill six soldiers in checkpoint attack
- Pakistan has faced a surge in militant attacks along its border regions since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistani Taliban militants stormed a security checkpoint in Pakistan’s northwestern border area with Afghanistan, killing six soldiers and wounding four others, a government official said Tuesday.
Pakistan has faced a surge in militant attacks along its border regions since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021.
It accuses Afghanistan of harboring the insurgents, a claim the Taliban government denies.
Late Monday, more than a dozen armed men attacked the checkpoint, leading to a heavy exchange of fire in Kurram, a tribal district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Six security personnel were martyred and four were injured, while two militants were also killed in the fighting,” the government official posted in Kurram, who was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP on the condition of anonymity.
The Pakistani Taliban group, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has long been active in the region, and claimed responsibility for the attack.
Pakistan accuses the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan of sheltering TTP militants and allowing them to launch cross-border attacks from there — a charge Kabul denies.
The border between the two countries has been closed since the clashes in October, though Pakistan said last week it would allow UN aid supplies to pass to Afghanistan soon.
The attack comes days after an exchange of gunfire and shelling between Afghan and Pakistani forces at a major border crossing that killed four civilians and one soldier, according to Afghanistan.
Each side accused the other of starting the fighting.
