A young Yazidi woman has revealed the horrific torture and rape that she suffered at the hands of ISIS fighters, as she was held as a sex slave for three months.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha described her nightmare imprisonment before the United Nations Security Council, pleading with it to wipe out the terror group.
The 21-year-old described the persecution the Yazidi people face under ISIS, which trades women and children from the minority population as ‘war booty’.
‘Rape was used to destroy women and girls and to guarantee that these women could never lead a normal life again,’ she said, visibly shaking with the effort of recounting her story.
Nadia described to the 15-member council how she was snatched from her village in Iraq by ISIS fighters in August last year.
She was then taken by bus to a building in the ISIS stronghold of Mosul.
‘Along the way, they humiliated us. They touched us and violated us,’ she continued.
I was absolutely petrified. When I looked up, I saw a huge man. He looked like a monster.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha, 21
‘They took us to Mosul with more than 150 other Yazidi families. In a building, there were thousands of Yazidi families and children who were exchanged as gifts.
‘One of these people came up to me. He wanted to take me. I looked down at the floor. I was absolutely petrified. When I looked up, I saw a huge man. He looked like a monster.’
She continued: ‘I cried. I cried out, I said “I’m too young and you’re huge”. He hit me. He kicked me and beat me.
‘And a few minutes later, another man came up to me. I still was looking at the floor.
‘I saw that he was a little bit smaller. I begged him. I implored him for him to take me. I was incredibly scared of the first man.
‘The man who took me asked me to change religion. I refused. Then, he asked for my hand in marriage, so to speak.’
The UN has branded ISIS’s treatment of the Yazidi people a possible genocide, after the terror group launched a campaign of murder, rape, abuse and torture against the population.
It has urged the UN Security Council to refer the issue to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.
Nadia continued: ‘That night he beat me. He asked me to take my clothes off. He put me in a room with the guards and then they proceeded to commit their crime until I fainted.
‘I implore you, get rid of Daesh [ISIS] completely.’
Nadia was able to escape after three months of the torture, and is now living in Germany, but several of her brothers were killed by ISIS militants.
The UN council’s first meeting on human trafficking comes just the day after it released a statement deploring people trafficking by ISIS and other groups such as Boko Haram.
It warned that ‘certain acts associated with trafficking in persons in the context of armed conflict may constitute war crimes’.
