When Zeinat and her family tried to get rid of ISIS, they ran terrified into the mountains. They knew about the horror stories and they knew too well what might happen to them if they stayed in their home.
Unfortunately, they were too late. When the fighters arrived, they were easy pickings. First, she was separated from her father and then from her sisters. After all this, she was forced – just like others Yazidi women – into slavery and treated as the property of the so-called “Islamic State”.
Zeinat was handpicked to work for terror boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his friends and family.
Zeinat (not her real name) confessed how Al-Baghdahdi beat and mistreated her. She also said that he raped American hostage Kayla Mueller, who was held captive by this group after being taken hostage in 2013.
“He treated us so badly”, said Zeinat. “He would always tell us: Forget your father and your brothers. We have killed them. And we have married off your mothers and sisters. Forget them.”
As soon as she arrived to his home in Raqqua, Syria (the capital of ISIS’s territory) she was made to watch a video showing ISIS fighters beheading a man. “There was a journalist, an American journalist, and there was a man dressed all in black. He killed the journalist. He beheaded him.” she remembered.
“Al-Baghdadi showed us this on the laptop, and they said to me, ‘If you don’t convert to Islam, this will happen to you — we will behead all of you.” She said. They said we have two choices “Convert to Islam. Or die like this.”
The Yazidis is a small Iraqi minority who believe in a single god who created the Earth. they have been subjected to large-scale persecution by ISIS.
Until now, ISIS militants have raped, kidnaped, tortured and massacred thousands of Yazidis.
Szenait was always determinate to escape so one day she spotted an opportunity.
“There was one window in our room. It was a little broken. We kept pushing it and pushing it until there was a small space”, she said. In the middle of the night, they run and kept on running. “We didn’t know where we were going. We just prayed to God. Prayed for God to help us, to end our suffering. We didn’t know where to go, we had no plan … we just ran in any direction.”
They kept on running to find a small village. “We saw all the houses had no electricity, there was no power except for one house. I told [my friend], ‘We are going to go to that house and ask for help … ISIS always turns off the electricity because of air strikes, [so] we should choose that house.”
“We went there and we told the family: ‘We are Yazidi girls who have escaped ISIS. We want to go back home and we want you to help us, if you can.’” The man who was living there with his cousin rode them to safety on the back of two motorbikes.
Finally, they made out safely and Zenait was reunited with her mother and some of her siblings. Her father is still missing, presumed dead, and three of his sisters remain in the hand of ISIS.
“I hope they kill him. Soon. He murdered people. He forced people to convert. He raped girls. He killed families, separating mothers from their children. I want the world to know how evil he is.” said Zeinat.
