ISIS intercourse slave tells of horror abuse – raped every day, burned with cigarettes and ‘merciless wives’
Nadia Murad was just 21 when her village in northern Iraq was invaded by ISIS militants in 2014. Her people, the Yazidis, were given two options – convert to Islam or die
Nadia Murad was 21 when she was captured by ISIS(Image: Getty Images)
A woman who was captured by ISIS and sold as a sex slave has told of her horrifying story of abuse. Nadia Murad was 21 when her village Kocho in northern Iraq was invaded by ISIS in 2014.
It is estimated over 6,000 women and children were captured by ISIS in the Yazidi genocide. Another woman Sipan Khalil was just 15 when she was abducted from the same village, as the Daily Star reported.
Nadia wrote that her people, the Yazidis, where given two options by ISIS – “convert to Islam or die”. She said: “We didn’t convert. Soon after, residents were taken to a local school, and the men, including six of my brothers, were taken away and executed within earshot.
“Then the Islamic State militants turned their attention to the women and children. I’ll never forget how my mother looked that day, her white headscarf pushed back, her hair wild and messy.
“Without saying a word, she rested her head on my lap. When one of the men grabbed me and tore me away from her, I screamed and begged. The last thing I heard my mother say was ‘I am going to die’. I never saw her again.”
Nadia explained how the girls were loaded on to buses before being sexually assaulted by a militant. She said: “The bus was eerily quiet as we drove. All I could hear were the footsteps of another militant pacing the aisles.
“He seemed to enjoy his job, stopping to taunt girls, groping their breasts, and laughing as though amused by their panic. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“I closed my eyes, praying the militant would go away, but his hand moved down the front of my dress and stopped on my breast. It felt like fire.”
Nadia screamed: “You brought us on this bus. You made us come, and this man won’t leave us alone!”
A commander replied, “You are here to be sabaya, and you will do what we say.”
This was the first time she was called sabaya, which means sex slave. Nadia and the other women were taken to Mosul where she was “beaten, spit on and burned with cigarettes”.
She was held in different houses before she was sold at a slave auction. Her captor immediately began physically and emotionally abusing her.
She realised his wife was in on it when he stopped abusing her to take her call. Nadia said: “I thought about the families living on the streets around me.
“Were they sitting down to dinner? putting their children to bed? There was no way they couldn’t hear what was going on.”
Nadia added that she had heard one story of an ISIS women helping a Yazidi woman escape her husband by secretly giving her a phone. She said: “But more often I hear stories of women who were even more cruel than men.
“They beat and starved their husbands’ sabaya, out of jealousy or anger or maybe just because we’re easy targets. Or maybe these women think of themselves as revolutionaries – even feminists – and have told themselves, as people have throughout history, that violence toward a greater good is acceptable.
“Still, I don’t understand how anyone could stand by while thousands of Yazidis are sold into sexual slavery and raped until their bodies break. There is no justification for that kind of cruelty, and no greater good that can come of it.”
Nadia managed to escape her captors by jumping over a wall, walking through the night and knocking on a stranger’s door who risked their lives by hiding her until she could make it to a refugee camp. She now lives in Germany where she lives in a small apartment.
Read Nadia Murad’s full story in her book The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State.
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