You may think ISIS’ demise in Iraq and Syria would mean an end to its sex-slave trading, but a new report says Islamic State has merely transferred its slave business into Turkey – including a market in Turkey’s capital Ankara. This means ISIS is involved in the slavery industry in a European country.

During its years of power in parts of Iraq and Syria, ISIS held slave markets both in private and public. With its loss of power, Islamic State began smuggling Yazidi women across the border into Turkey. It imprisoned them with ISIS families it had shifted from Iraq and Syria into Turkey previous to the major losses in territory.

ISIS is also said to be negotiating with the close relatives of these women to release them after years of captivity, torture and sexual slavery. The ransoms are believed to amount to thousands of dollars, which for many Yazidi families are sums they simply cannot afford.

It is understood that when the families don’t meet the ransom demands, ISIS sells the women to the highest bidders.

ISIS’ slavery operation is already up and running in three Turkish cities — Gaziantep, Urfa and Ankara — said Yazidi human rights campaigner Ali el-Hansouri speaking to Sputnik’s Arabic website.

Click here for 5 Things You Should Know About ISIS-Tortured Yazidi Women

Not only is ISIS holding women against their will, “but ISIS is also not releasing Yazidi children who were transferred to Turkey,” said el-Hansouri. “Rather it’s holding them within the houses of its activists there.”

Amir and Amira aged eight and 10 are two such children currently in Kirsehir, in central Turkey. A Yazidi organization managed to locate them. For the last seven months, the group has been in contact with the Iraqi embassy in Ankara to help repatriate them, so far to no avail.

During its years of tyranny, ISIS seized as many as 5,000 Yazidis, mostly women and children from the Sinjar area, enslaving them and forcing them to convert to Islam. Refusal meant torture and rape.

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