Syria: Undercover network
dedicated to saving Yazidi
women and children
from ISIS
The Great IScape
Resistance fighters rescue women raped,
beaten and caged by jihadi thugs
WEARY women are helped to safety by armed rescuers as they flee IS in a feat to rival the Great Escape.
They are among 34 mums and daughters who were kept as slaves by jihadi soldiers for eight months.
The victims, the eldest 60, suffered appalling sexual and physical violence.
Their daring exit, which saw them trudge barefoot across mountains for two days with little food or water, was made possible by an underground network of brave resistance fighters.
Guides based inside IS risk their own lives to free women and children from the terror group’s strongholds in Syria.
They lead them to the border, where they are then smuggled into Iraq by lawyer Khaleel Al Dakhi, who co-ordinates the dangerous rescue missions.
Their amazing work has been revealed for the first time by new Channel 4 documentary, Escape From Isis.
Khaleel is from the Yazidi community of the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq, which last August was the target of a devastating IS attack.
Hundreds were killed and thousands of women and young girls captured.
The Islamic extremists consider the Yazidi minority to be infidels.
Yazidi women are bought and sold as slaves among twisted IS fighters, with girls as young as nine subjected to torture and rape.
It is these victims that Khaleel and his activist cell do their utmost to rescue.
Khaleel, who has a five-year-old girl, says: “I can’t imagine not seeing my daughter — to talk to her, to hug her.
“Now hundreds of children like mine have been taken, we have to keep going.”
He adds: “No one has said they will rescue our people. No government. Imagine if one of your people was captured. You’d do everything you could to save them.”
The operation began after some girls managed to escape the barbaric regime on their own.
Khaleel started gathering their testimonies in the hope of using them as evidence in a future war crimes trial.
Then he realised that the escapees had valuable information that could help others to flee.
He started collating a map of IS positions and Yazidi prisons. Then he developed contacts within IS who were prepared to lead captured women to freedom.
His heroic guides range from political agitators who will do anything to undermine the regime, to penniless shepherds who will help in exchange for a few hundred dollars in expenses.
Most of them are Sunni Arabs — the people IS claims to represent.
The girls they have successfully rescued tell harrowing stories of the abuse they endured.
Amal, 18, was held by an IS commander and his six bodyguards, all of whom would rape her daily.
She reveals: “I’m still in pain. I can’t sleep. I wake up at 3am smelling them.”
Life is little better for the four million women in IS with its ruthless oppression and medieval controls. All females are forbidden to go outside without a close male relative.
When they do, they must wear gowns to hide their body shape, gloves to cover their hands and three black veils to hide their face.
Even a small infringement of the code results in brutal punishment.
A Syrian former teacher who fell foul of the regime’s enforcers said: “‘They said my eyes were visible through my veil. I was tortured. They lashed me.
“Now some of them punish women by biting. They give you the option between getting bitten or lashed.”
She added: “We have no freedom. We cannot go out on the balcony or look through the window. They will arrest a woman if she wears perfume or raises her voice. A woman’s voice cannot be heard.”
A savage female police brigade, known as Al-Khansa, persecutes fellow women.
As many as 60 of these morality fanatics are British.
One former enforcer, Umm Abaid, a Syrian woman who has since fled IS, admitted: “Anyone who broke the rules, we would lash. Then we would take her male guardian, her brother, father or husband, and lash him too.”
Women have even been buried alive for dress code infringements.
Grisly public executions are also commonplace. After taking over the Iraqi city of Raqqa, IS stoned a woman to death for adultery.
Despite this barbarism, there are still hundreds of educated Western women, including Brits, who are voluntarily making the journey to IS to join the jihadists.
The documentary’s director Edward Watts, said: “If this film does anything, I hope it makes those girls think twice about what they are doing.”
The crew risked their own lives to record the footage while activists within IS filmed themselves to show everyday life, including being stopped at a checkpoint for ID.
Edward added: “When we were up on the frontline it was nerve-racking. You hear stories from the soldiers stationed there.
“IS attack them every night at 3am. They come at them in great numbers with mortars, suicide bombs and rocket launchers.
“The way the soldiers describe them, it is as if IS is some sort of zombie army you just can’t stop.”
Meanwhile a twisted redhead dubbed the “Ginger Jihadi” has issued a threat of a direct IS attack on the UK.
Aussie Abdullah Elmir, 18, revealed he is now married to runaway East London schoolgirl Amira Abase, 16, in Syria.
He said: “Brothers I know are itching to do an attack. This is a direct threat.”
Disobey iron rule and pay the price
BARBARIC punishment is dished out to women in IS unless they observe strict rules at all times.
They have to wear two gowns to hide their shape, gloves and three veils so the face is never visible.
If a body part is glimpsed in public, punishment will be inflicted on it.
One woman had 100 lashes on her big toe.
The penalty for a patterned garment is a lashing or biting.
Women cannot be heard speaking, sit on a chair, wear perfume, smoke or leave the house unless with a male relative.
They should only go out in exceptional circumstances — to commit jihad when no men are available, or for religious study.
Clothes shops and beauty parlours are the work of the devil.
Girls are married from nine. Adulterers get stoned to death.
IS has declared the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority, to be infidels.
They have slaughtered 5,000 Yazidis and abducted up to 7,000 women and children for sex.
There are 700,000 Yazidis worldwide, mainly in northern Iraq, with small communities in Armenia, Georgia and Syria.
They believe in one god but also seven angels who rule the world on his behalf. The Peacock Angel is singled out for reverence.
But Christians and Muslims equate him with Satan.
This is why Yazidis have been persecuted for centuries and why they are hated by hardline Islamists.
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