Yazidi Girl Who Escaped ISIS Slavery Recounts Her Tale of Horror

Lamiya Aji Bashar lost her right eye after stepping into a land mine while attempting to escape for the fifth time.

The young Yazidi woman was kept as a sex slave by IS militants in Iraq and Syria. (Photo: AP screengrab)

Note: ISIS survivor Lamiya Ali Bashar has agreed to her being identified by her original name to The Associated Press.

Lamiya Aji Bashar tried to escape her tormentors four times. After each attempt failed, her Islamic State (ISIS) captors beat her and abused her even more. On the fifth attempt, in March, the young Yazidi woman, who was kept as a sex slave by ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, thought she had finally made it to freedom.

But as she and two other Yazidi girls, who were escaping with her, neared Kurdish front lines in northern Iraq, one of them stepped on a land mine. The explosion killed the other two. The guide who was smuggling them out saved her and brought her to Kurdish forces, she said.

Bashar lost her right eye in the blast, her face was left covered in scars and her damaged left eye needs treatment to save what’s left of her sight.

But the defiant 18-year-old sees it as a victory over the men who abused her.

Bashar’s whole family was abducted on 15 August 2014, from their home in the village of Kocho near the town of Sinjar, a Yazidi enclave in Iraq that fell to ISIS when the Sunni extremist group overran large swaths of the country’s north and west that summer.

ISIS militants later separated and took them to different places. Bashar doesn’t know what happened to her parents, who are presumed dead. Her 9-year-old sister Mayada remains a captive.

(With inputs from AP)

Video Editor: Mohd. Irshad Alam