The posting in Arabic is chilling. A girl for sale: “Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years old … Her price has reached $12,500 and she will be sold soon.”

The advertisement, along with others for kittens, tactical gear and weapons, appeared on an encrypted Telegram app and was shared with the Associated Press by an activist with Iraq’s persecuted Yazidi community, which is trying to free an estimated 3000 women and girls still held as sex slaves by Isis extremists.

As Isis loses control of one city after another in its self-styled caliphate, it is tightening its grip on its captives, taking the Yazidis deeper into its territory and selling them as chattel on popular encrypted apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp, the Associated Press has found.

The extremists are targeting smugglers who rescue captives for assassination and are deploying a slave database with captives’ photos and owners’ names to prevent escape through checkpoints.

Thousands of Kurdish-speaking Yazidis were taken prisoner and thousands more were massacred when Isis fighters overran their northern Iraqi villages in August 2014. Since then, as the Yazidi captives have been conscripted into sexual slavery, smugglers have managed to free 2554 women and girls. But by May, an Isis crackdown reduced those numbers to just 39 in the last six weeks, according to figures provided by the Kurdistan regional Government.

The AP has obtained a batch of 48 head shots of the captives, smuggled out by an escapee. The portraits appear to be the same as those used in a database to prevent the captives from slipping past checkpoints, or for barter and sale on popular apps.

Mirza Danai, founder of the German-Iraqi aid organisation Luftbrucke Irak, said the slave database documents the captives as if they were property.

“They register every slave, every person under their owner, and therefore if she escapes, every Daesh control or checkpoint, or security force — they know that this girl … has escaped from this owner,” said Danai, using a common acronym to refer to Isis.

The Yazidis have been targeted by Isis because they practise an ancient faith combining elements of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni extremists view them as infidels. The Yazidis’ pre-war population in Iraq was estimated at 500,000. Their number today is unknown.

The photos obtained by AP depict girls dressed in finery, some in heavy makeup. They stare somberly at the camera. Some are barely teenagers. Not one looks older than 30.

Nazdar Murat is among them. She was about 16 when she was abducted along with more than two dozen girls and women who fled their home in Iraq’s Sinjar area when Isis took over.

Inside an immaculate tent outside Dahuk, Nouri Murat, Nazdar’s mother, said her daughter managed to call once, six months ago for a few seconds.

“We spoke for a few seconds. She said she was in Mosul,” said Murat, referring to Iraq’s second-largest city. “Every time someone comes back, we ask them what happened to her and no one recognises her. Some people told me she committed suicide.” She is not sure whether to believe them.

Hussein Koro al-Qaidi, head of the Yazidi assistance committee in the northern Iraqi city of Dahuk, said no one has stepped up on the Yazidis’ behalf. And money to pay for smugglers or ransoms is now running out, according to the Kurdish government and organisations working to save the women and children.

“Neither the Iraqi Government, nor the international charities or other countries are helping us to save the Yazidi girls,” said al-Qaidi.

Contraband photos of captives offer families a thread of hope that they might see them again. But they are also used by Isis to sell them on Telegram and, to a lesser degree, WhatsApp and Facebook, according to an activist who asked to remain unnamed for fear of his safety.

Meanwhile, the captives’ odds of rescue grow slimmer each day.

Even when Isis retreats from towns like Ramadi or Fallujah, the missing girls are nowhere to be found among the thousands of newly liberated civilians.

Said Andrew Slater of the Yazidi advocacy group: “There are still thousands of women and kids in captivity but it’s getting harder and harder to get them out.”

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Via: nzherald.co.nz

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