Yazidi Girls Seized by ISIS Speak Out After Escape - NYTimes.com
KHANKE,
Iraq — The 15-year-old girl, crying and terrified, refused to release
her grip on her sister’s hand. Days earlier, Islamic State fighters had
torn the girls from their family, and now were trying to split them up
and distribute them as spoils of war.
The
jihadist who had selected the 15-year-old as his prize pressed a pistol
to her head, promising to pull the trigger. But it was only when the
man put a knife to her 19-year-old sister’s neck that she finally
relented, taking her next step in a dark odyssey of abduction and abuse
at the hands of the Islamic State.
The
sisters were among several thousand girls and young women from the
minority Yazidi religion who were seized by the Islamic State in
northern Iraq in early August.
The
15-year-old is also among a small number of kidnapping victims who have
managed to escape, bringing with them stories of a coldly systemized
industry of slavery.
Their
accounts tell of girls and young women separated from their families,
divvied up or traded among the Islamic State’s men, ordered to convert
to Islam, subjected to forced marriages and repeatedly raped.
