The prosecution's closing arguments in the trial of the Islamic State (IS) organization jailers, which lasted almost nine hours on Wednesday, March 19, opened with an impressive introduction. An hour-and-a-half-long foreword aimed at granting a historic dimension to the hearing, which, over five weeks, had thrust the court into the heart of the jihadist group's totalitarian system, into its hellish torture center set up in a hospital's basements in Aleppo, Syria, where 25 Western journalists and humanitarian workers were kept as prisoners.

"If this hearing is to have any virtue, it is that of showing us the true face of jihadist barbarism, of this ideology dedicated to the destruction of mankind," began the prosecutor, Benjamin Chambre. "The systematic abduction of humanitarians, their sequestration in inhuman conditions, are signs of the abjectness of jihadist ideology, which disregards people's intentions to reduce them to what they are, or appear to be: Non-partisans of the cause, in other words, unbelievers, men and women whose lives no longer matter."

"But above all, what this case has brought to light is the extent to which the terrorists showed little regard for the Syrian population they claimed to be defending," he continued. "These mistreatments, these beatings, these mock executions were nothing compared to the daily torture inflicted on Syrian prisoners. While Western hostages were kept alive as long as they might have some political or economic value, Syrian detainees were violently abused and unceremoniously executed. The jihadists ranked their victims. And within this pseudo-Islamic State, the life of a Syrian was worth less than that of a Frenchman."

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