A lawyer who has helped to rescue 530 women and children from ISIS controlled territory in northern Iraq has told of atrocities being committed by the group and warned British women not to join ‘Islamic State’.
Khaleel al-Dakhi, whose work is to be covered in a forthcoming television documentary, says of ISIS:
"They beat the women, they gang rape them, they make them have forced marriage with many men. Some women have their infant babies taken away by force. They take them to a slave market and give women to each other like a gift.”
British women should face up to the truth about ISIS, Khaleel says:
"Any British women who plan to leave the UK and voluntarily join ISIL should talk to the escaped women of Sinjar about life under the terrorists’ rule,” he says.
“Maybe they don’t believe me, they don’t believe you, they don’t believe the government. But if they come into our area and talk to our girls, then they will believe.”
In August 2014, ISIS lay siege to Mount Sinjar. Thousands of Yazidi men were murdered and over 3,000 women kidnapped.
Now, Khaleel has created an extensive network to facilitate the rescue of women from the ISIS controlled area and has been actively rescuing women and children since September 2014.
Khaleel tells of one 9-year-old girl who was raped by a middle-aged man and forced to undergo Genital Mutilation before he attempted to rape her again.
Conditions experienced by women under the ISIS regime are extreme. Even women who live there by choice are not allowed to leave the house without a male relative and are forced to wear three veils over their face. They risk a lashing if their eyeballs are visible.
The situation in ISIS controlled territory and the work of Khaleel al-Dakhi are the subject of a recent Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, which was broadcast on Wednesday 15 July at 10pm. A clip from the documentary is available here.
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This man risks his life every day to rescue kidnapped women from Islamic State (Telegraph)