ISIS captives being sold as sex slaves and 'treated like livestock'

A Yazidi woman who managed to escape from the clutches of the Islamic militants shared the harrowing tale of how she and her children were physically and psychologically abused, tortured, and sold as sex slaves.

In an interview with Bas News, the 49-year-old mother of four who identified herself only as Sevi of the Kurdish Yazidi community in Telbenat, northern Iraq, narrated the monstrous fate they suffered at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) terrorist group.

The horrific story started Aug. 3, 2015 when the Islamic State militants seized their area and took the residents to a nearby village where the militants forced the men to convert to Islam.

"They [IS militants] later separated women and children and took them inside the village, while men were kept out; no one knows what happened to men after that day," Sevi said.

She identified the militants as coming from the Arab Khatouniyah tribe of Baaj district.

The captives were then taken to Sinjar where thousands of young Yazidi women were rounded up. After Sinjar, the women were transported to a hospital in Tel Affar district before they spent 40 days at Badoush prison and then eventually in Raqqa.

"During our stay at the prison, the terrorists were trying to separate young girls from their families; they attempted to take my 11-year-old daughter but I resisted as saying that she is ill," she said.

Sevi recalled how they were fed only two meals a day of small pieces of bread that came sometimes with cheese.

"After we arrived in the suburb of Raqqa, we frequently asked the locals who were supporting IS why they are treating us like this and they responded every time that Yazidis are unbelievers and should convert to Islam," Sevi shared.

She also revealed that the women were sold off for as low as $10. They were raped, tortured, and humiliated. She and her children were sold off several times to people of different nationalities whom she said had "no mercy for the Yazidi captives" as they were "treated like livestocks."

Sevi's story is reminiscent of the one shared by another escaped Yazidi captive, 15-year-old Samia Sleman, who appeared in April during a United Nations conference and narrated how young Yazidi women were raped and kept as sex slaves while the young boys were brainwashed and trained in ISIS camps.