Yazidi Woman Tells Horrific Story From Heart of Islamic State
Non-stop, daily torture, sexual harassment and violence against her children
The Yazidi girl tortured by ISIS militants
BasNews
ERBIL — A Yazidi woman,
who survived being forced into sex slavery by Islamic State (IS)
militants, has told the horrific story of living under the extremists.
Speaking under the assumed name of Sara
to protect her identity, she explained that she was living in a small
complex of Yazidis south east of Sinjar when IS militants attacked the
city on August 3rd 2014.
“It was very early in the morning when
we heard the jihadists had surrounded our area, and thousands had
already fled to Mount Sinjar,” Sara said. “There was about 200 of us who
tried to hide in a nearby village.”
She said that later that afternoon an IS
vehicle reached the village and a jihadist promised not to harm them so
long as they remained calm. “His accent revealed that the IS militant
was originally from Sinjar,” she said.
Sara’s husband was serving as a
Peshmerga and also ran a shop in Sinjar. They owned a house and a car.
The husband hid $40,000 of the family savings in the wreckage of a house
before the IS insurgents arrived.
In tears Sara told BasNews that a large
number of militants arrived in the village later and separated the
elderly from the youths. “They took our cell phones, watches, jewellery
and wallets.”
The militants then took the Yazidi men
outside the village and put the women and children in pickups. Sara said
that before the cars started moving, they heard rapid gunfire. "We
started screaming as we saw a group of jihadist coming back with bloody
clothes and without our husbands and sons," Sara said while sobbing. "We
were quite sure that we just lost our loved ones."
The Yazidi women were then taken to
Solakh, a village in southern Sinjar, and then to Tal Afar, where they
were locked up in a school building with very little food and water
during the extreme heat of August. "That was a very hard time; but we
didn't know that worse was yet to come."
According to Sara, a Kurdish member of IS insulted them every day, calling the Yazidis infidels that deserve the worst death.
The group were transported to Mosul
after 40 days in Tal Afar. Sara said that they arrived in a complex with
a very tall fence and scores of guards. "Later we found out the place
was Badoush prison in Mosul. We suffered bad meals, dirty water, hot
weather and a disease spreading among the children," Sara added.
The insurgents asked the women who was
willing to convert into Islam. Sara, her mother and mother-in-law
pretended to want to convert to save their lives. The converted women
were then transported to Kasr Mihrab and Qizilqew villages near Tal
Afar, were 300 Yazidi men had also 'converted' to Islam.
Jihadists told the women to find their
husbands among the crowd and each family could stay together in a house.
"As I was certain that my husband was dead, I found a young man from
among my relatives and asked him to pretend to be my husband," Sara
explained. "We stayed together like sister and brother."
But the tragedy for Sara did not end
there as her fake husband escaped IS after few weeks to leave Sara in
fear of being raped, tortured and killed.
Heading to Raqqa
Early one morning, a group of militants
gathered the Yazidi women and again separated those who looked younger.
But this time Sara was not able to hide. They noticed her covered face
trying to remain with her children, but they chose her this time to
travel with the youths.
In the Yazidi tradition, young single girls wear different clothes from married women.
Sara and her children joined a group of
young women in a bus. After several hours, Sara asked a girl sitting
next to her, "Can you read the signs on the road so we can understand to
where we are heading?" After few minutes, the girl responded, "we are
apparently going to Raqqa."
When they arrived in the IS stronghold
in Syria, the women were divided into several groups and distributed
among IS commanders [Emir].
After three weeks, a man bought Sara for
very little money and took her and the three children to his house
where Sara came to expect every sort of humiliation and torture.
One evening, Abu Musaab Tunisi — her
'owner' — told them that he needed to temporarily sell them to another
"Muslim brother" as he had to return to the frontlines.
"He took us to the market place and
shouted in a tea-shop, 'These are for sale...'. I noticed two Kurdish
jihadists there and begged them to buy us; but they refused to pay a
penny for a woman with three children."
However, Sara and the children were
finally left with a friend of Tunisi's called Abu Nayif Liby. He already
had a young Yazidi woman at home.
Soon after Tunisi left, Liby approached Sara and tried to rape her, but she refused to surrender.
Sara began sobbing as she explained the
torture her four-year-old son was subjected to as a result of her
mother’s resistance against sexual harassment.
A week passed and Tunisi returned. He
left Sara several more times during deployments to Mosul, Sinjar and
other areas. Once she was left in a house belonging to an IS commander
from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where three other girls from Sinjar
were staying. Sara complained to him about Tunisi's torture as she felt
more comfortable communicating with this commander.
When Tunisi returned and heard about the complaints, he took Sara to an open area in the city centre and put her in a dry well.
"I started screaming and begged him to
take me out," Sara explained. "But he returned hours later at midnight
and started beating me."
From that night, Tunisi's mistreatment doubled and he forced Sara to memorise 20 chapters from the Qur'an or he would kill her.
"I memorised ten chapters just to stay alive and look after my children... That was extremely hard."
Finally, Tunisi had to go back to the
battlefield, so he decided to permanently sell Sara and the children.
This time, Abu Jihad Liby bought them and took the family to Tal Afar.
Sara said that Liby was very aggressive because he was using drugs most of the time.
Torture becomes a way of life
A few days after arriving, Liby threatened to behead Sara's children if she refused to memorise 20 chapters from the Qur'an.
"I had already memorised ten and
continued with the rest. But Liby never stopped torturing me because he
was not satisfied with my ability to read and memorise their holy book."
Liby forced Sara to learn to use
weapons, as she was chosen to join the militants on the battlefield.
After days of training, Sara was told to get ready to head to Sinjar.
“I realised that we could not take the
children with us and when I asked about them, Liby said that they will
be locked in a room. I begged him again to let me stay with the kids but
he refused.”
A week in Sinjar was an extremely tough
period for the mother away from her children. She was tied up for the
entire time and didn't stop crying.
“Liby would beat me, demanding why I would not calm down and shoot some Peshmerga instead of complaining all the time.”
“When we returned home, I rushed to the
front door and searched the room,” Sara said in tears. “Finally I found
the two girls lying down on the floor in a locked room. When I asked
about their brother, they pointed to a cabinet door about two metres
high.”
Sara’s son was locked up in a cabinet
for the whole week without food and water. He was passed out but still
breathing. Sara took care of them for days as Liby refused to take them
to hospital.
He shouted at Sara, “One day I will kill your kids, they are infidels and I am not going to feed them any longer.”
Tunisi once again returned to Tal Afar
and stayed at Liby’s home. “Two days after his arrival, I heard him
encouraging Liby to kill my 'infidel children' to please God. He
suddenly rushed into the room and took my son to the bathroom, tied him
to the tap and started urinating on him… and I could do nothing for my
poor son but cry.”
Tunisi left two days later and Sara was finally able to take her son out of the bathroom.
But the tragedy for Sara did not end
with Tunisi’s departure. Liby began torturing the children in front of
Sara while she was tied to a column, forced to watch them dying.
“He was worse than a wild animal in my
eyes… he killed my two-year-old daughter in front of me,” Sara sighed.
“One day, he started severely beating my daughter and I could hear her
elbows breaking… the poor girl was screaming.”
The worst thing, Sara said, was that “you find yourself unable to doi anything for your child.”
“My cries made him angrier; he took my
daughter and knocked her to the ground,” Sara continued after minutes of
sobbing. “I heard a strange sound when she hit the floor… and she
died.”
Sara covered her face behind a scarf as she wept.
After a year of suffering in that house,
Sara’s father managed to pay to and free her and two children, via some
tribal leaders in the area.
Sara concluded the interview by saying, “The Kurds must show no mercy to the savage animals of IS.”
She is now living with her family in a refugee camp in
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