Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan (CNN). In
the canvas expanse of the Shariya refugee camp, thousands of Yazidis live
within hearing distance of one of Iraqi Kurdistan's frontlines with ISIS.
The vast majority of the camp's
occupants are from the town of Sinjar and fled the ISIS assault there back in
August. But not everyone escaped. ISIS took thousands of Yazidis captive.
Men faced a choice -- convert to
Islam or be shot. But the Islamist militants separated the young women and
girls to be sold as sex slaves
In its fourth edition of
"Dabiq," the ISIS online magazine, an article titled "The
revival of slavery before the hour," outlines the group's twisted
justification and guidelines for the enslavement of the Yazidis.
"One should remember that
enslaving the families of the kuffar (infidels) and taking their women as
concubines is a firmly established aspect of Shariah," the article reads.
We're told that women who have
just given birth or are breastfeeding are considered impure and cannot be taken
as sexual slaves -- but Hanan, 19, was neither of those things.
"They separated all of
us," she says. "They dragged us away by our hair. They took married
women, young ones. The youngest with us was just 10. We were all crying.
"They said we are going to
marry you off, you will forget your family."
'Sex slave warehouse'
For the first week, Hanan was
held with 50 others, regularly beaten and threatened with torture, and fed just
a bowl of rice.
The group was then taken to a
three story building in Mosul she described as a sex slave warehouse, where hundreds
of girls and women were held.
"They would line about 50 of
us up at a time, in rows of 10. They would say don't move, don't cry or we will
beat you. The men would come in and describe the kind of girl they wanted and
then they would pick and choose as they pleased," she recalls.
"The girl spoke to us in Kurdish
and said they beat me, they cuffed me and raped me".
Hanan, former captive of ISIS
She was eventually chosen, part
of a group of 25. From that group Hanan was separated into a smaller group of
seven and taken into a house in a village.
Two ISIS fighters guarded the
door and ordered the girls to clean and bathe themselves.
"They brought in a Yazidi
girl who had been with them for two months. She was wearing the black niqab.
They said to us we are going to do to you what we did to her," Hanan says.
"The girl spoke to us in Kurdish and said they beat me, they cuffed me and
raped me."
Hanan and the others decided they
had to try to escape. That night they crawled out the bedroom window.
"The fourth girl jumped out,
I was the fifth. I crawled to the wall and was about to jump over it and then I
saw their flashlight," she tells me. "They caught the last two
girls."
They ran, and somehow evaded
capture. Four hours later they were out of ISIS territory.
"If I just see someone with
a beard I start shaking," Hanan says.
Now physically free but mentally
still captive, Hanan remains tormented -- like so many others, by what she has
been through and what those still with ISIS are being forced to endure -- a
fate worse than death.
Read: Fleeing ISIS -- A Yazidi
family's tale
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