Freed Yazidi girl reveals daily rape over six months as ISIS sex slave
A Yazidi girl who escaped from Islamic State (ISIS) has told of how she was raped every day for six months by her captor.
Ekhlas, who was 14 when she was imprisoned, tried to escape jihadis in northern Iraq by climbing Mount Sinjar but was caught and held as a sex slave.
In 2014, ISIS began to target the Yazidis, an ethnic Kurdish minority group, who ISIS believes are “devil worshippers”.
At the time it was reported that as many as 40,000 people had taken refuge on the mountain, as ISIS fighters killed men and captured women and children in the region.
“Everyday for six months he raped me. I tried to kill myself,” Ekhlas told the BBC. “He picked me out of 150 girls 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,” she said.
Ekhlas told of how managed to escape while her captor was out fighting.
From there she was taken to a refugee camp, but now lives in a psychiatric hospital in Germany, where she is receiving therapy and education. She said that she hopes to train as a lawyer.
In the clip, Ekhlas says she can no longer cry about the abuse she suffered, as “she ran out of tears”.
In August 2014 ISIS carried out the Sinjar massacre in the region in which almost 5000 people were killed and 50,000 were displaced.
Horrific stories of brutality, part of a genocide against the group, have since emerged.
Vian Dakhil, a prominent Yazidi politician in Iraq, who has shone a light on the atrocities, recently spoke of the torture, child rape and cannibalism suffered by members of the religious minority.
The stories comes after it was revealed that a 16-year-old German girl who ran away from home to join Islamic State (ISIS) said she wants to come home.
Linda Wenzel, who disappeared from Pulsnitz near Dresden on July 1 last year, was detained in Iraq, along with other female supporters of the group, after the Battle of Mosul, which saw ISIS fighters forced out of the ancient city.
She was found along with 20 female ISIS supporters from Russia, Turkey, Canada, Libya and Syria, who are believed to have barricaded themselves with guns and explosives in a tunnel underneath the ruins of Mosul’s old city.
Speaking to German media, she said: “I just want to get away from here. I want to get away from the war, from the many weapons, from the noise. I just want to go home to my family.”
