The scarred face of a sex slave who escaped from IS

After more than two years of being forced into sex slavery by IS, an 18-year-old Yazidi girl hit a landmine while trying to escape, leaving her blind in one eye and scarred on the face, but she says it was worth it.

Lamiya's face is scarred from a landmine she hit while escaping. Photo: AP

Lamiya Aji Bashar made five successful escape attempts in March, running toward government-held territory while being pursued by Islamic State (IS) militants. A landmine exploded, killing her companions, Almas, 8, and Katherine, 20. She did not even know their last names.

Even though the explosion blinded Lamiya's left eye and left her face burned and scarred, she still felt lucky.

"I held on until the end, God willing. I escaped them," said the 18-year-old girl, who is at her uncle's house in Baadre, a town in northern Iraq.

"Even if I go blind in both eyes, it's still worth it because I survived."

Lamiya was kidnapped from the village of Kocho, near Sinjar, in the summer of 2014. Her parents are believed to be dead. Lamiya’s nine-year-old sister, Mayada, is still in IS hands. She once sent a picture of herself standing under an IS flag to her family.

Five of Lamiya’s other sisters escaped and were taken to Germany. A younger brother, after months in an IS training camp in Mosul, successfully escaped and was reunited with relatives in Dahuk, a city in the autonomous Kurdish region.

Sitting on the bed, Lamiya spoke in a monotone voice, recounting her time of captivity and being bought and sold within IS. All of her "owners" beat and abused Lamiya.

Lamiya's first "owner" was an Iraqi IS commander named Abu Mansour who lived in Raqqa, the IS stronghold in Syria. He regularly beat and handcuffed her.

Lamiya tried to escape twice but failed and was caught, beaten and raped repeatedly. After a month, she was sold to another IS fighter in Mosul. After two months with him, Lamiya was sold to a bomb maker. He forced Lamiya to help him make suicide belts and car bombs.

"I tried to run away," Lamiya said. "But he caught me and beat me up."

When the bomb-maker grew tired of Lamiya, she was sold to an IS doctor in Hawija, a small IS-occupied town in Iraq. He was the head of the town hospital and regularly abused Lamiya. After more than a year, she secretly contacted her family.

Lamiya’s uncle said the family had to pay $800 to local smugglers to arrange her escape. The 18-year-old will be reunited with her siblings in Germany, but her heart remains firmly in Iraq.

"We lived in a beautiful house, a big farm... And I got to go to school," Lamiya said, her voice full of regret. "Life was beautiful back then."

IS's online slave market

"Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years old... Price 12,500 USD, buy now before it's gone", is the sex slave advertisement written by IS on the social network Telegram in Arabic.

The ad was shared with the AP by an undercover activist in Syria’s Yazidi minority. Despite losing territory, IS still holds an estimated 3,000 women and girls as sex slaves.

They are sold like commodities on smartphone apps, displaying full photos, names and "owners" so they cannot escape IS checkpoints.

In August 2014, IS overran Yazidi villages in northern Iraq, taking thousands of prisoners. Since then, Arabs and Kurds have planned to rescue about 134 Yazidis a month. However, in May, IS intensified its crackdown, and in the past six weeks, they have rescued only 39.

Mirza Danai, founder of the German-Iraqi relief organization Lufbrucke Irak, said that in the past two to three months, escape has become more difficult and dangerous.

"They keep a register of every slave, every owner, and so if any girl runs away, every IS checkpoint or patrol knows that this girl has run away from her owner," Danai said.

IS does not consider the Yazidis to be people. The Yazidis believe in an ancient Persian religion that combines the beliefs of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Before the war, their population in Iraq was estimated at 500,000, but the current figure is unknown.

Nadia Mourad, a victim of IS forced sexual slavery and successful escape, has presented before the US Congress and the European Union calling for help.

“IS is proud of what they did to the Yazidis,” Nadi said. “They were used as human shields, not allowed to escape or run away.”

IS message selling 12-year-old girl online. Photo: AP

IS sells them using encrypted apps, said one activist, who asked not to be named. Advertisements for their sale often appear on Telegram, Facebook or WhatsApp.

“Telegram is extremely popular in the Middle East compared to other regions,” said Markus Ra, a spokesman for Telegram. The company is committed to preventing abuse of its service and regularly removes channels used by IS.

In a group with hundreds of members, in addition to selling a 12-year-old girl, IS also sold a mother and her two children, aged 3 years and 7 months, on WhatsApp for $3,700.

"She wants her owner to sell her," the ad reads.

"We will remove posts like this and disable accounts if we have sufficient evidence to show that a user is violating our policies. We encourage people to report posts like this," said Matt Steinfeld, a spokesman for WhatsApp.

Many of the photographs show women and girls dressed in finery and heavily made-up, standing in front of armchairs or behind silk curtains in a shabby hotel, staring directly into the camera. Some appear to be fresh out of primary school, none of them looking more than 30.

One of them was Nazdar Murat, who was just 16 when she was kidnapped two years ago and was one of more than 20 girls taken by IS in a single day in August 2014. Nazdar’s father and uncles were among 40 people killed when IS overran Sinjar, the homeland of the Yazidi people.

Inside a makeshift tent outside the town of Dahuk, northern Iraq, Nazdar's mother said her daughter had been able to contact home once, six months ago.

"We spoke for a few seconds. She said she was in Mosul," said Murat, Iraq's second-largest city.

Her family keeps records of missing relatives on their mobile phones. They give them to anyone who has successfully escaped IS to ask if they have seen her or anyone else, in the hope of finding their missing relatives. But as time goes on, hope grows slimmer.

"Every time someone came back, we asked them if they had seen my daughter, but no one knew her. Some said she had committed suicide," said Ms. Murat.

According to VNE