A 15-year-old girl sits on the floor of the temporary house where she is living with relatives after escaping in early August. Photo: AP.
The 15-year-old Yazidi girl is still shaking as she describes the days she was kidnapped by IS fighters in Iraq, then sold into sex slavery in Syria before she fled to Türkiye.
This victim currently lives with the few remaining family members, two brothers and a few distant relatives, in a temporary house on the side of the road in a small Iraqi village.
Her two sisters are still in IS hands, while her father, brothers and other male relatives are still unknown.
The young woman was just one of hundreds of women from the Yazidi minority community captured by IS in early August when the terrorist organization invaded their village of Sinjar, northwest Iraq.
AP reporters had the opportunity to talk with witnesses and a few other young women who escaped from IS.
For weeks after being kidnapped from Sinjar, the 15-year-old girl and her two sisters were taken from place to place.
Rubbing her hands together, her eyes avoiding the other person’s gaze, she told her story in a clear, decisive voice and without hesitation when asked questions.
Falling into the hands of IS, she and many other victims were taken to the nearby town of Tal Afar.
From the city of Mosul, she and her sisters continued to the Syrian city of Raqqa and were imprisoned with a few others.
`They brought women to Syria to sell and I was no exception. I stayed with my sisters for about 5 days and then one of my sisters was sold and taken back to Mosul. I am still in Syria,` AP quoted.
In Raqqa, she married a Palestinian man.
The IS soldiers did not recognize her and continued to sell her for $1,000 to a Saudi Arabian gunman.
Later, a man took her to Türkiye to meet her brother.
Yazidi people fled IS in August. When this terrorist organization invaded their village of Sinjar, northwest Iraq, hundreds of women and girls were captured.
In the same situation, Amsha Ali, 19 years old, was also dragged out of her village in Sinjar by IS to the city of Mosul.
Ali said that in Mosul, she and many others were taken to a house full of IS soldiers to get married.
A few weeks later, Ali escaped through the bathroom window at night.
Ali now lives with his father and sister in an unfinished house in Sharia town, where about 5,000 Yazidi refugees live.
`The massacre was not the most terrible thing to me, even when they forced my husband, brother-in-law and father-in-law to lie on the ground to kill them. It was painful. Being married to ISIS members was the worst.`