ISIS sexually brutalizing captured women, UN expert says

The Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists have shocked the world after seizing vast swaths of land in Syria and Iraq a year ago with their brutal atrocities against civilians.

They have carried out mass executions in the most horrific manner imaginable that includes throwing people off towers, public beheadings, stoning and crucifixions. They have also taken hostage a number of women and traded them in marketplaces as sex slaves.

Yet, the jihadists continue to shock the world even today more than ever before.

A recent report by Zainab Bangura, a special representative of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, on sexual violence said after capturing women, jihadists stripped them naked and conducted virginity tests before sending them for auctions as slaves.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, an independent regional news website, said, "After attacking villages, the jihadists split women from men and executes boys and men aged 14 and over. The women and mothers are separated; girls are stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and prettiness. The youngest, and those considered the prettiest virgins fetch higher prices and are sent to Syria's Raqqa (the stronghold of the Islamic State)."


In this image made from a ISIS video posted on YouTube, a jihadist hammers away at a face on a wall in Hatra, a large fortified city recognized as a Unesco World Heritage site, 110 kilometers (68 miles) southwest of Mosul, Iraq. (Via AP)

She said a 20-year-old woman was burned alive after refusing to perform an "extreme sex act" on a jihadist.

"We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act," Bangura said.

"We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts," Bangura added.

She said the inhuman campaign of rape and brutality ISIS was waging against women was worse than in any other war zone she has worked in, including Bosnia, Congo, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Somalia.

Bangura had just returned from a fact-finding mission in Syria, Iraq and three other Middle Eastern countries, where she met officials, survivors from the Yazidi, Christian and Turkmen minorities and frontline workers.

She said some have managed to flee their captors or to commit suicide, but when the jihadists discovered girls used their headscarves to hang themselves, they forced them to remove these.

"I learned of three girls who tried to commit suicide by drinking rat poison, which had been left in a room. They started vomiting and were rushed to hospital and washed out. When they came back, they were brutally attacked," she said.

According to Bangura, sexual violence against women and girls is central to ISIS's ideology and is used to recruit fighters, raise funds, enforce discipline and advance their radical ideology.

"ISIS is organized, coordinated and operates on a widespread and systematic basis to commit a staggering array of atrocities."

"We struggled to understand the mentality of people who commit such crimes," she said.