Yazidi women vow revenge on Islamic State captors who used them as sex slaves

Yazidi women vow revenge on Islamic State captors who used them as sex slaves

Hundreds of Yazidi women are missing and believed to be held captive by IS

Former Yazidi sex slaves desperate for revenge have taken up arms and joined the forces fighting Islamic militants in Syria.

The battle against the extremists is reaching its final phase in Raqqa, once the capital of their self-declared caliphate, but there are still hundreds of Yazidi women missing and believed held captive by Islamic State fighters.

One woman, who we will call Shireen, spoke to us just four days after escaping from her captors. She was being looked after in a safe house by a charity.

She'd been sold as a slave to a number of extremists calling themselves Emirs or commanders. Her voice is laced with bitterness and hatred as she recounts her three-year-long ordeal.

"As a woman held by ISIS, they did everything with me," she tells us. "And everything by force. They used to tell us, you are our sex slaves, our servants. You have to do everything we say and don't question it. Just be quiet. We'll do whatever we want to you."


Image: A unit set up by the Syrian Democratic Forces is made up of Yazidi women

She has three children who she managed to smuggle out with her. The youngest is only three years old. She was married before being captured by extremists but she hasn't seen her husband since.

"Most men get killed by IS," she says.

Her tone is steely and matter-of-fact as she recounts the most horrific details of her constant abuse, physical, emotional and sexual.

But she only breaks down when she describes the cruelty meted out to her children.

"I'm going to fight them," she tells us, "I'm going to take my revenge … the things that IS did to my kids …," she pauses, sobbing, "I can't forget it."

Image: Victims have vowed to hunt down their captors

Tears are streaming down her cheeks as she tells us this. She describes how she couldn't get her youngest to stop crying during one incidence of abuse.

The fighter shouted at her to quieten the baby and when she couldn't, he punched the toddler so hard, the child was winded.

When she intervened to protect her baby, she was hit so hard, she blacked out for four hours.

She's now determined to join the fighting unit set up by the Syrian Democratic Forces which is made up of Yazidi women, some of them former slaves themselves, now bent on revenge.

"I can not stay and do nothing," says Shireen.

"I have to get a gun and fight … not only me but all the women who escaped from IS are going to get weapons and hunt them down."