Sitting on a shabby green sofa somewhere in the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, Iraq, the militants laugh and joke as one of them films their excited chatter.
“Today is the female sex slave market day, which has been ordained,” explains a skinny, black-clad Jihadi, gesturing at the camera.
“With Allah’s permission, each will get a share,” promises another of the fighters.
“Where is my Yazidi girl?” asks the first, a wide grin splitting his straggly-bearded face.
The Yazidis are an ancient people, followers of a unique religion that blends elements of Islam, Judaism and Christianity with even more ancient practices, including sun worship.
They believe in a single god who created the Earth and left it in the care of a peacock angel, Malak Ta’us.
But this belief — decried as “devil worship” by ISIS — has been used by the Islamic extremists to justify murder, enslavement and rape.
“They took our girls, our homes and our families,” says Yazidi spiritual leader Baba Sheikh. “They took all of them. We say our fruitful generation is our children, but they took them all, young and old.”
ISIS chief’s former slave says he beat her
Noor (not her real name) was sold into slavery after ISIS overran her village in the Iraqi province of Sinjar. The 22-year-old says the militant who picked her out raped her — but not before trying to justify himself.
“He showed me a letter and said, ‘This shows any captured women will become Muslim if 10 ISIS fighters rape her.’ There was a flag of ISIS and a picture of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.”
After abusing her, he passed her on to 11 of his friends, who also raped her.
Yazidi women sold, raped, enslaved by ISIS
In ISIS territory, Yazidi women can be bought and sold for money, bartered for weapons, even given as a gift; but this is not a simple commercial transaction — ISIS has made rape and slavery part and parcel of its — brutal — theology.