The Heroes Risking Their Lives to Free ISIS Sex Slaves Subjected to Rapes, Stonings and Whippings:
> Undercover Footage Reveals Bravery of Undercover Network Dedicated to Saving Women and Children
- Dozens of ISIS sex slaves have been rescued by secret resistance network
- Brave guides inside ISIS are helping abused captives flee jihadi territory
- They are led to the Iraq border and smuggled across into refugee camps
- Locals and political activists risk their lives helping the women escape
Daily Mail UK, 13 July 2015
Women and young girls held as sex slaves by depraved Islamic State militants are fleeing their captors with the help of a heroic underground network of resistance fighters (pictured left).
Risking certain death and torture in a bid to flee their brutal oppressors, many spend several days making their way through Syria and Iraq to the safety of government-controlled territory (bottom right).
Their plight, and that of their brave rescuers operating with hidden cameras (top right) inside ISIS-controlled territory, has been detailed in a new documentary due to air on Wednesday.
Many of them have been subjected to appalling violence, rape and sexual abuse at the hands of ISIS fighters and commanders.
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A resistance fighter in Syria carries a girl once held captive as a sex slave to safety across the Sinjar Mountain, in northern Iraq
Hidden cameras record a group of women in the streets of the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria
A young girl covered head to toe in a burqa in accordance with the bloodthirsty militants' strict laws
Using a hidden camera, a young woman is filmed lifting her veil in order to see where she is walking
The hidden cameras also captured this harrowing moment when an activist was questioned at an ISIS checkpoint
Their plight has been documented in the harrowing new
Channel 4 documentary Escape from ISIS, which is due to be broadcast this week.
The film follows those responsible for helping the ISIS sex slave victims through a highly co-ordinated escape network.
With little food or water, their escape is made possible with the help of Khaleel Al Dakhi, a lawyer-turned-activist.
ISIS has carried out 'systematic sexual crimes' against girls from the Yazidi community since kidnapping more than 3,000 girls from their homes in northern Iraq last August.
Unjustly regarded as ‘devil worshippers’ on account of their unusual beliefs, the Yazidi have for centuries been one of the most persecuted minorities of the Middle East. Islamic extremists regard them as infidels, worthy only of being killed.
Those considered the 'most beautiful' by ISIS leaders are sent to horrendous auction houses where they are stripped naked and sold to the highest bidder.
Edward Watts, the documentary director, told MailOnline the majority those being rescued were Yazidis who had been treated as 'subhuman' due to the ISIS belief they were 'devil worshippers'.
He said: 'They're desperate to get their hands on a mobile phone and when they do they call their families and tell them "I'm alive".'
Once the families of the women were notified, they contact the resistance network to arrange a rescue, he said.
Escape From ISIS: The Heroes freeing ISIS sex slaves;
Khaleel Al Dakhi (pictured) is a lawyer who co-ordinates the captive women's escape routes to Iraq
A young girl who was abducted by ISIS is reunited with her family at a refugee camp in northern Iraq
Two young girls who were captured by ISIS pose for a photo having made it the safety of a refugee camp in Dohuk, Iraq
He added: 'They have all sorts of different ways of doing it, but they have a network of guys inside ISIS [territory].
'They identify where the girls are being held, go in and grab the girls and take them across the frontline.'
The journey to safe territory can be arduous - the film follows the fortunes of a group of women who spend days hiding in a field during downpours, while another young girl loses her shoes and makes the two-day trek barefoot.
Mr Watts said the group claimed to have rescued up to 500 women in total but some rescuers had died in the process.
Only recently two men were killed after ISIS militants set a trap for the rescuers.
Mr Watts explained: 'They got a woman under duress to call up and say "I'm in this house can you come and rescue me, the guy holding me is away", when in fact it was a trap.
'These two guys turned up, ISIS caught them and they were stoned to death.'
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YAZIDI GIRL, 17, MADE PREGNANT BY ISIS JIHADI REVEALS HORROR ORDEAL
Horrifying: The teenager told how she and and her 10-year-old sister were handcuffed and taken to a hotel where other scantily dressed women and girls were auctioned off to jihadis Picture: A sex slave victim of ISIS, many of whom say they try to kill themselves so that they won't be raped again
A Yazidi teenager has told how she and her little sister were raped daily by depraved jihadists after they were sold into slavery at an auction of virgins - as she revealed she is now pregnant with the vile extremist's baby.
The girl, who is just 17, revealed how every day of her nine-month ordeal was 'like choosing between death and death' as she was faced with beatings and sexual assaults by the ISIS militant and his team of 'bodyguards'.
The teenager told how she was gang-raped, whipped and even scalded on the thigh with boiling hot water if she didn't keep with her ISIS rapist's depraved sexual demands.
Now, three months pregnant with Al-Russiyah's baby, the girl says she gets flashbacks and nightmares about what he did to her.
The girl was bought by Al-Russiyah, originally from Chechnya, who purchased her, her 10-year-old sister and two other girls in 10 minutes.
But it was not only the prospect of what the horrors they would face once they were taken away from the auction house which left the girls distraught.
Once at their new 'home', an abhorrent daily routine from which they could not escape began.
Each morning, Al-Russiyah would strip the girls naked, then smell them and decide who he wanted to have sex with that day, she said.
After the he had made his choice, his bodyguards would select one of the remaining girls for themselves.
But the bodyguards were so rough with her that the teenager felt relief at being picked by her captor, who would 'beat her less than the other men'.
It was only when he and his bodyguards were killed in battle that she managed to successfully flee.
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TRAILER > Escape From ISIS: The Heroes Freeing ISIS Sex Slaves
Freeing The Slave Women Of ISIS
ISIS Sex Slaves Who Refuse to Perform Sex Acts Will be Burned at the Stake
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A Documentary That Ought to Rank With the Footage of British Troops Liberating Belsen
Channel 4's latest episode of Dispatches, Escape from Isis, which includes secret footage inside the terror state, is TV at its most unmissable, says James Delingpole, The Spectator UK.
So you’ve just popped out of town for the day on an errand. And when you get back, everyone has gone. Your wife, your kids, your nephews and nieces, your friends, your customers: they’ve all been kidnapped and dragged off to a place so barbarically horrible that really they’d be better off dead.
Your daughter, for example. If she’s nine or over then she’s considered fair game. She’ll be sold as a slave in the market to the highest bidder — as ever, there’s a premium for blonde hair or blue eyes— after which her new owner can use her as she wishes.
The very least she can expect is to have to spend her every day in the most restrictive clothing anywhere in the Muslim world. Her hands must be hidden by black gloves, her eyes invisible behind three veils. On those rare occasions when she is allowed outside, she must stumble as if half blind.
If she accidentally breaks these rules she’ll be beaten; if she raises her voice she’ll be beaten; if she disobeys an order she’ll be beaten — usually by the al-Khansaa Brigade, a special female police group of brutal enforcers, mostly foreign recruits determined to prove their loyalty by being extra zealous.
Really, though, these may be the least of her worries. One 18-year-old escapee reports what happened when she was bought by a self-styled ‘sheikh’: first, her owner raped her; then his six bodyguards — through the night till morning (‘they were not raping me in a gentle way, but with force and fast movement, without care’); then, the driver gave her to 12 men. ‘They did everything to me. I’m still in pain.’
Even now that this (relatively) lucky girl is back safe with her family, the stink of those men is still with her and no matter how hard she tries she knows she’ll never get rid of it. She now cleans her teeth ten times a day (the first thing her owner did was dip his toe in honey and shove it in her mouth) but of course it makes no difference.
Yes, of course, we most of us now have a rough idea of the terrible things that are happening in Isis-held territory in Syria and Iraq. But up until now it has been tempting to inure oneself to the full horror with the bromide that these are people a long way off about whom we know little.
Not any more. Next Wednesday (15 July), Channel 4 airs a documentary in its
Dispatches slot so important it ought to rank with John Pilger’s exposés of Cambodia’s Killing Fields or even the footage of British troops liberating Belsen.
Escape From Isis uses secret footage — filmed by extremely brave people who would have been killed if discovered
— to show you in unsparing detail what it’s like behind the Black Flag curtain: everything from the small talk of Islamic State fighters as they jauntily discuss what they’re going to do with their Yazidi captives to the dull thump heavy rocks make as they hit the flesh of a woman being stoned to death by a group of religious zealots led by her own father. It’s ugly, it’s almost unbearable to watch and it’s essential viewing.
One of the questions most often asked about the Holocaust is: why didn’t the Allies do something to stop it sooner? I imagine the time will come when we give ourselves a similar beating-up over our inertia in dealing with Islamic State. (‘So the UK Prime Minister wrote to the BBC urging it to call them by a different name. And that was it?!’)
I remember when the Prime Minister was trying, unsuccessfully, to co-ordinate military action against the Assad government, one of the things he urged MPs to do before they voted was to watch a film he’d seen showing the atrocities Assad’s supporters had committed.
This, it struck me at the time, as it does even more so now, was an hysterical and irresponsible suggestion. Important decisions regarding military action should not be decided in a mood of heightened emotion. The same applies to this
Dispatches documentary.
It is not an argument for or against anything. It merely shows you what is. I’ve made it sound ghastly but what makes it bearable, uplifting even, is the extraordinary story it tells of the rescue operations that have brought at least some of these captured Yazidis back to the bosom of their tearful families. Watch and you will share their joy. This is TV at its most unmissable.
This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 11 July 2015