Romain Ruiz on prosecuting the Yazidi genocide

Romain Ruiz is a lawyer specialised in criminal defense, with a human rights approach. He has notably assisted several independence movements regularly accused of terrorism and of breachs to humanitarian law.

He represents the yazidi victim in the "Sonia M." case, a universal jurisdiction case in front of French courts which will be tried in 2026.

The interview as conducted by Léa Franchisteguy, Justine Lager, Tacéo Lenfant et Louisa Ustachakowski.

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The interview was conducted in May 2025 and has been edited for clarity.

How is the victim you represent involved in the trial and how will she participate in the trial? As she participated in the pre-trial phases?

For now, she is still in Erbil. She has been seen by a French judge who was in Erbil, I think two years ago, with some French investigators, just to meet her and ask her questions with the local authorities. Up to the trial, she will – we hope so – get a visa from the French embassy. We are negotiating this.

French justice pays for the victims to come in France for trials when they are foreigners. We are waiting for the financial part, for the French justice to give us the money we need for her to come.

We have a big issue because usually French justice reimburses the costs and it is really difficult for her to just give the money before, because she does not have the financial means to do so. We are trying to find a way for her to come with an advance of the French justice, and that is a big issue for now.

She has not been to France yet.

How does the French justice system deal with the cultural differences, the different languages? And how do you personally deal with these kinds of issues?

It is not really our strong point in France, because the French system was made for French victims and French criminals. For the foreigners it is something that does not function really well.

We have interpreters who will be able to be in court with her to speak in her language. According to the pre-trial phase, I am obliged to speak with her in English, in Arabic with Google Translations or with DeepL. I do not have a proper interpreter for me, so when I speak with her, as she does not speak English at all, I need to speak through a friend of hers who speaks a little English. We are speaking by WhatsApp and it is really difficult for us to have a real bond and to speak of all the subjects which are intimate subjects. It is a big issue because talking about those kinds of stuff without being able to speak in our language and to speak directly with her is a big issue. The French justice system does not think about those kinds of issues.

We also have a strong problem in this case, but it is the same thing in other cases, which is the fact that according to the compensation of the foreign victims of those kinds of trials, the law does not permit now to give this money to the victims who are not French. We have a system of compensation, the “CIVI” [Commission d’indemnisation des victimes d’infractions] and the “Fonds de Garantie des Victimes du Terrorisme”, but it does not function when you are not French. I think it is the strongest issue in those kinds of trials because it is like hypocrisy. It is really hypocritical to say to the foreign victims that we will be able to do such trials in France without being able to make it completely.

Does the victim have any kind of psychological support?

No, she does not have any psychological support in Iraq.

During the trial she will have a psychologist who will be there, but that is just during the trial phase, which I think will last for a week – maybe a week and a half. It is not enough.

For now, she is still in Erbil without any help from the French judicial system, except the fact that she has a lawyer, but it is the only thing she has.

Do you know if the psychologist they will provide will speak her language?

I think she will have a French psychologist who will talk with her through the interpretation system on the trial.

Once again, it is not enough because the trauma the Yezidi and the victims of those kinds of crimes have lived are not the “business as usual dramas”. For the French psychologists, they have not got a real training for that, it is really specific, and I do not think that the French justice is ready to help her efficiently.

Turning to the legal characterization of the crimes, we understood that the genocide and crimes against humanity’s charges per se were dropped, there was “non-lieu”. How did that happen and what will be the consequences for the victim?

It happened because the genocide crimes need to have more than two victims. It can not be a genocide if you are the only victim, that is what the law says. This decision to drop the charges was, from a legal point of view, a good decision. That is the reason why Sonia M. will not be sent in court on this specific crime.

For the victim it is not a big deal in this case because we have other crimes that she will respond to.

Additionally, Sonia M. is not the only one who will be sent to court. Her husband, whose name is Benyoucef, will be sent to court as well, but he is presumably dead in Syria. The French judicial system does trials when we are unsure if that the person is dead. So he will be tried, without him being present.

For the Yezidi victim it is not a big deal that those charges have been dropped because Sonia M. will be sent to court for complicity of another crime, which is rape, a crime she helped her husband commit on my client.

You talked about complicity in crimes against humanity for rape, but there was also one terrorism-related charge. How does this duality - terrorism on one hand and crimes against humanity on the other - work in the French judicial system?

It does not work very well. The French judicial system thinks it can handle every qualification in the same trial, which is, I think, a disgrace. I think we should separate these trials because it is the same places, the same people, but it is not at all the same topics.

If we want, in France, to make proper international justice instead of, for example, the International Criminal Court and other justice systems, like the Syrian justice system, we think we are now able to make trials about what happened in Syria … With my partner Raphael Kempf, we were in Damascus one month ago, so we have seen the new Syrian justice system, which is not fully efficient, but which can work now. If the French justice system wants to do this kind of trial, we need to make it completely. We need to make it on a good basis.

The fact that we are judging at the same time terrorism and crimes against humanity is not really efficient I believe for at least two reasons. The first is the fact that we have prosecutors who are prosecutors from the Parquet National Antiterroriste, who are specialized in terrorism and only terrorism. They have sections on crimes against humanity but not all the prosecutors are able to deal with those kinds of topics. Also, crimes against humanity suppose that we take the time to understand the context, to understand the victims, to try to think of more than just a simple trial. We need to make it a society topic. If we mix everything, I think we are not achieving the goals of those types of trials.

In your opinion, in the eyes of the system, is this a question of time or of budget?

It is a question of will. I think that the French justice system does not have the financial means for everything, but I think it is up to the justice to decide which trials are more important than others. For example, in the trial I am in now, the court decided to make it a trial for history: we have cameras, we have recordings, we even have a régie [control room].

The financial means can be put in some trials, and we see it every day in the justice system. It is really a decision that the French judicial system has to make, but it is a political issue because now we have some struggles between two ministers: of l’Intérieur and of Justice. One wants to put everything in the counter-terrorism for political reasons, to say to the people that we are doing something on this specific topic and maybe there are other points of views in the system who want to make it more international, make it more useful for the long term. Now we have this issue which is to decide what we want as a justice system and it is not really clear.

What are for you the legal or evidentiary obstacles when dealing with sexual and gender-based violence, especially as it was a central component of the Yezidi genocide?

I think the main issue is the proof. I think this will change with the Syrian revolution, that we will be able to have proof, proper proof of sexual abuses. Even in France it is really hard to prove it concretely because it is a type of crime that is without proof in any case so it is even harder when the crime is seated a thousand kilometers from us. How we prove it is a real problem.

In the specific case of Sonia M. we have a confession. Sonia M. recognized what her husband did it to my client. She said he did it once, but I think it was a lot more. We also have lots of international reports, articles on how the Islamic state uses sexual crimes against some communities. We are obliged to do it with the materials we have, which are not really big and important, but I think the main issue is that: How do we prove it?

The other issue is the way the victim talks about this kind of issue. Because it is really hard for Yazidi victims and, well, all the women in the world, to talk about these specific crimes. But for the Yazidi victims it is a cultural issue to say that you have been raped or sexually abused because you risk a lot when you say it to your community. You risk an excommunication. It is like a double penalty. Lots of victims in the Yazidi community do not talk about it, because they do not want to be excommunicated.

It is a double issue to prove it. Lots of times we do not have a victim saying, ‘I have been abused.’ That is a tricky question and it is linked with the topic we talked about earlier because we do not have psychologists and specialists that are able to talk with those victims efficiently to make them talk about that. It is like a “shock of civilization” between how we think this, how they think this, how we are able to talk about these issues.

I think the main issue is that now we need, in the French judicial system, to think out of our box and stop thinking as French and start thinking as people of the earth in order to to take into account the cultural differences between us if we want to be efficient.

Do you think that there is a risk that these crimes are minimized, especially when cases are framed primarily through the lens of terrorism?

Yes, but I think it is a media issue, because it is up to the media to talk about that instead of always talking about terrorism. That is a choice of society. We are in a “fear society” where a lot of media are now politicized and decide what topics are important or not.

I think that it is really hard now to expect some “mainstream media” to talk about these issues, and if they are trying to, I think they always say bullshit and things that are not really precise. I do not want someone in CNews to talk about this topic because he will say absolutely bullshit. It is not really efficient.

The fact that we talk about a subject makes it a topic in France. We need to try to think how we can talk about what happened in Syria without talking only about terrorism and the links with France. As a criminal lawyer in counter-terrorism, for many people who are accused of terrorism, my opinion is that the French judicial system does not care about terrorism as an issue. The only thing the French justice wants to investigate is the links with France, the threat that those people may be for France, and how France is responsible or not for what happened to our French citizens that have been to Syria to commit terrorism. We do not have a global reflection on this problem of terrorism and the fact that lots of French people are involved in the Syrian conflict. My opinion is that we need to revolutionize the way we think and we judge terrorism in France. After that we may be able to talk about those kinds of issues but it is a long way to go.

In the Netherlands for example there was a big outreach effort to the affected Yazidi community. The trial days were livestreamed and translated into Kurmanji Kurdish. Do you know whether something similar will happen in your case?

Not at all. It is not the French way to do things. In fact, my opinion is that those kinds of trials is about what the French justice system looking for. We are not looking to help the Yazidi community. We are using it to make a political statement internationally and to try to be part of the diplomatic discussions around the world.

I think now when you see French diplomacy around the world, we understand really quickly that we are not really significant now. Through the judiciary system and those kinds of trials, I think France is trying to take a role in international diplomacy saying: ‘Okay, we are not invited to the table of decision. Now we know that it is Russia, USA that are leading the discussions now with Ukraine and so on … Maybe China and others. But the French today don’t represent anything in the diplomatic world’. Maybe it is a way, it is a tool that the French try to use just to be significant, saying: ‘Ok, we can not do much more than this because we are the so-called country of the “droits de l’Homme” [human rights]’. Which is total bullshit because we are not the country of the “droits de l'Homme” but of the “Déclaration des droits de l’Homme” which changes everything. I think now, justice is just a tool, a political tool and a diplomatic tool to try to exist internationally.

I do not think that we will do things to help any community. First of all, it is not the ambition of the French justice now, we just want to tick the box and say: ‘OK, we did it, look how good we are, look how nice we are and how we are the so-called country of the “droits de l’Homme”, because we do it for you’.

I work a lot on transitional justice topics and issues, and every specialist, every expert says that transitional justice works only if you are close with the population that has been victim of the crimes. The close you are, the more efficient the transitional justice works. I do not think that for the Yazidi in Iraq or in Syria, the fact that this trial happened in Paris will change anything. If we want it to work, if we want to do it for the Yazidi community and all the victims of international crimes, we need to do it in the countries that lived the conflict and the crimes.

I think that in France it is an appropriation of the pain. I think it is imperialism and it is a neo-colonial way to act, especially in Syria because we had a mandate in Syria. We have been in Syria just before the Second World War. Acting like that will not solve anything. I think it is counterproductive.

Looking ahead, what do you think the impact, if any, and the public perception of the case will be specifically in France?

There are two options. The first one is business as usual. We will say: ‘Okay, it’s another terrorist that has been in Syria, Sonia M. This woman is a disgrace and she deserves what she is facing. And we hope that she will be sent to prison for years.’ And we skip this trial and go on with our lives, which is probably what will happen in the French society. I think it is a shame, but I need to be objective, lots of times it is what happens.

The second option is that we decide to make this trial a society subject. We decide to think, to talk about the Yazidi genocide. We decide to take time to explain what is the Yazidi community, because I think in France it is not known at all. If you ask a man on the street, ‘Do you know the Yezidi?’ he will think it is maybe a car brand or something like that, but he doesn’t think that it is a community. We need to take that time to say that France is a country, but we are not alone in this world. We have this community, this is their story, this is what the specific issues are, and what is the threat to humanity if the Yazidi community is suppressed, annihilated.

Now we know for a fact that in the Yazidi community the pain and the genocide is still going on. We have information saying that it is not the end of ISIS and was not the end of the Yazidi genocide. For now, as we talk, we have, in Iraq and in Syria, groups that still have slaves from the Yazidi communities, that still commit sexual abuses and war crimes against them in the silence of the international community. I know that we have lots of issues in Ukraine, in Gaza, but no one is talking about the Yezidi. And if we continue to do so, I think that in maybe ten years, the Yezidi community will not exist at all.