A Young Girl Who Escaped ISIS Recounts Story

A young Yazidi girl, who is calling herself Ekhlas, has told the BBC that she was raped every day for six months after the ISIS captured her at the age of 14.

Her rapist picked her out of a group of 150 women. The tale she tells is horrific and emotional.

“Every day for six months he raped me. I tried to kill myself,” Ekhlas said. “He picked me out of 150 by drawing lots. He was so ugly, like a beast with his long hair. He smelt so bad. I was so frightened I couldn’t look at him.”

The gutsy Ekhlas escaped from him while he was away fighting. She sought refuge in a refugee camp, and has now immigrated to Germany. She is attending school and hopes to become a lawyer.

Thousands of other Yazidi women like Ekhlas have been kidnapped in northern Iraq. Ekhlas says that her life was beautiful, but it changed in just two hours, when the men with their black flags came. She was kidnapped and locked in a prison.

“All I heard was screaming and crying,” she said.

ISIS targets Yazidis because they believe them to be devil worshippers.

According to Iraq’s Bureau for the Rescue of Abductees, since the operation to take back Mosul, started last year, 180 women from the Yazidi community have been liberated. ISIS targets Yazidis because they believe them to be devil worshippers. They label them as polytheists and think they are eligible for enslavement. An estimated 9,900 Yazidis were killed or captured when ISIS took over Mount Sinjar in 2014.

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry said ISIS’ “violence against the Yazidis constitutes a case of genocide.”

Psychologists say that the women who have been rescued display extraordinary signs of psychological injury. Ekhlas is also receiving therapy in a psychiatric hospital. 

"How am I telling you this without crying? I tell you I ran out of tears," she said.

Pic Credit: The Oslo Times

Also Read: Held captive by ISIS, now appointed UN Goodwill Ambassador: Nadia Murad