A Yazidi mother who was forced into sexual slavery has managed to escape from ISIS militants but her four teenage girls remain captive jihadi brides.
Hanif, 43, told her painful story to CTV News Chief Anchor Lisa LaFlamme, who is in northern Iraq on a joint CTV News-Toronto Star reporting mission.
“They took my honour,” she said through a translator.
ISIS militants overran Hanif’s village, Kocho, in 2014, massacring most of the men and telling the women to convert from their ancient religion or face death.
Hanif’s husband, Hamdi, managed to escape, but she was captured and sold as a sex slave to 14 different men.
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The couple’s daughters – ages 19, 17, 15 and 12 – were forced to marry ISIS militants. Hanif does not know where her girls are now.
The boys, including her nine-year-old, were enrolled in a terrorist training camp.
“They gave them AK-47s,” she said.
Hanif said she paid $22,000 to have herself and the two boys smuggled out of Raqqa, Syria, just 10 days ago.
She found Hamdi in the UNHCR camp near Qadiya, not far from the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul.
About 16,000 people – almost all from the Yazidi minority group – now live in the camp, including those who escaped the massacre at Sinjar, where thousands were slaughtered in 2014.
The camp’s population is merely a tiny portion of the more than 3.4 million Iraqis who have been forced to flee their homes within the country’s borders as ISIS has advanced.
Hanif is safe for now, but her life is on hold until she gets her daughters back. And with ISIS militants just 30 minutes from the camp, she could find herself enslaved once more.
