Murad's disturbing personal account is part of her effort, represented by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, to bring Islamic State members to justice for war crimes and genocide against the Yazidi people. It's not easy. When the Islamic State swept into northern Iraq in , thousands of Yazidis were killed and thousands more were kidnapped, including women and girls who were taken as sex slaves.
Our stories can make a difference. When the war began, Murad was a student living a quiet life in the village of Kocho in northern Iraq. We were a peaceful, open people. The militants arrived in Kocho in August and ordered everyone to the schoolhouse. The men were then forced to leave, and gunfire soon rang out. Scores of men were killed, including six of Murad's brothers. Murad was put on a bus with other young women, relatives and neighbours, and ISIS fighters began groping the women. They set an elderly woman on fire.
Murad and the other young women were taken to the home of a wealthy family in the city of Mosul, where crowds of men grabbed at them. One man extinguished a cigarette on Murad's stomach. Another man chose three women, paying for them in U.
The rest were offered up at a chaotic slave market, and Murad was dragged off by the first of her tormentors. One day an Islamic State gunman left her alone in a house, and Murad found an unlocked door. She stepped out into the courtyard, climbed the wall and dropped down into an empty street, terrified.
All you think about is how to survive. Murad walked swiftly through the darkening streets of Mosul, her face covered by a long veil. She banged on the door of a house and begged for help. The family inside let her in and eventually smuggled her out of ISIS territory, passing her off as the wife of one of the men. As they went through the last checkpoint, she spotted her photo on a flier showing wanted escapees. Murad made her way to a refugee camp and was accepted as a refugee to Germany in She now lives with her sister, a war widow, in an apartment in Stuttgart.
