"They touched us like we were animals!" Former ISIS s3x slave who won Nobel Peace Prize opens up

Piece by: Geoffrey Mbuthia
Lifestyle

A former ISIS s3x slave has revealed the harrowing moment she was picked by a giant jihadi brute from a group of terrified Yazidi women - as they screamed and vomited in terror.

Nadia Murad, 25, has spoken in shocking detail of her experiences at the hands of ISIS sex traffickers - who treated women as 'animals' touching them wherever they pleased.

Writing in her autobiography, the now Nobel peace prize winner, spoke of her experiences one night at a slave market.

She said: "We could hear the commotion downstairs where militants were registering and organising, and when the first man entered the room, all the girls started screaming."

The entrance of the men would terrify the women who, Murad says 'would double over and vomit on the floor'.

They would then ask if the women were virgins to which the vendor would reply 'of course.'

Murad's autobiography, which is featured in The Guardian today, recalls in harrowing detail this examination process.

She says: "The militants touched us anywhere they wanted, running their hands over our breasts and our legs, as if we were animals."

Eventually Murad was sighted from among the crowd by a high-ranking militant named Salwan - a man she claims 'looked like a monster'.

His strength was daunting, she claims.

Murad said: "He could crush me with his bare hands. No matter what he did, and no matter how much I resisted, I would never be able to fight him off. He smelled of rotten eggs and cologne."

The terror of this jihadi brute became so overwhelming that she eventually threw herself at a smaller man - begging him to take her.

The man, who was a judge in Mosul, agreed.

Murad had found herself at the hands of ISIS sex traffickers after her home village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq, was attacked.

She was captured alongside her sisters and lost six brothers and her mother.

Eventually Murad was able to escape her ISIS captors, smuggling herself out of Iraq.

She later went as a refugee to Germany in early 2015.

This year's Nobel peace prize was awarded to her alongside two others.

Outlining the reason for the decision, the committee said: "she has shown uncommon courage in recounting her own sufferings and speaking up on behalf of other victims.

"Nadia Murad is one of an estimated 3,000 Yazidi girls and women who were victims of rape and other abuses by the IS army.

"The abuses were systematic and part of a military strategy. They served as a weapon in the fight against Yazidis and other religious minorities."

ISIS jihadists organised slave markets for selling off the women and girls, and Yazidi women were forced to renounce their religion.

For the jihadists, with their ultra-strict interpretation of Islam, the Yazidis are seen as heretics.

The Kurdish-speaking community follows an ancient religion, revering a single God and the 'leader of the angels', represented by a peacock. They numbered around 550,000 in Iraq before 2014, but some 100,000 have since left the country.

After herself being granted asylum in Germany in 2015, Murad continued the fight for the 3,000 Yazidis who remain missing, presumed still in captivity.

She has said that IS fighters wanted 'to take our honour, but they lost their honour' and has dedicated herself to what she calls 'our peoples' fight'.

Murad has now become a global voice, campaigning for justice for her people and for the acts committed by the jihadists to be recognised internationally as genocide.

At just 25, is the second youngest Nobel peace prize winner. The youngest was Malala Yousafzai, who won in 2014 at 17-years-old after she was shot in the head at close range by the Taliban for campaigning for girls' education in Pakistan, where she grew up.

Nadia Murda's biography The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State, published by Virago, is out now.