ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate by Speckhard Anne & Yayla Ahmet S

Author:Speckhard, Anne & Yayla, Ahmet S. [Speckhard, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Advances Press, LLC
Published: 2016-07-04T21:00:00+00:00

Click here to see a woman being flogged by ISIS - taken from an ISIS defector’s cell phone.

“How do they carry out these floggings?”

“They flog them on their backs. They flog the person very strongly.”

“Can they get up and walk after?”

“When they tell him to get up, he has to get up, but only Allah knows how they feel. They call this whip al-Lakhdar Brahimi,” Ibn Mesud explains. He is referring to the UN peace envoy and negotiator for Syria from 2012 to 2014 who is deeply hated by ISIS. The whip is made of a green rubber tubing and akhdhar means green in Arabic so it’s a play on words.

“Another time there was a sister and brother walking. The hisbah stopped them and asked, ‘Where are your IDs?’ as they could not walk together if they were not related. They didn’t have them on their persons. They accused the girl of being a whore and an infidel and took her with them to the hisbah, but let him go. He ran home to get their IDs and returned to the hisbah. There they told him that they didn’t have her, but he insisted that they had been together when the hisbah stopped them. The hisbah accused him of lying and whipped him ten times as a punishment. Later, she was found dead near a river, close to the marketplace where she was taken.”

We suspect she was raped or sexually molested but Ibn Mesud is too conservative to admit it. Ahmet presses. “So this girl, do you think they had raped her?”

“Only Allah knows,” he answers, his voice going numb again. “Her family was screaming and crying. But if that happened they wouldn’t say it because it could be a scandal for them,” referring to the Arabic honor tradition in which the shame from the rape of their relative could also fall upon them.

The call to prayer is sounding so Ahmet excuses the group to go and pray together while I wait for them to return. When they do, Ibn Mesud shares a few more stories of his time in ISIS. Once the barrier of speaking of rape is broken, and perhaps also having had his trust bolstered by just having prayed with Ahmet, Ibn Mesud opens up and tells more stories of women in ISIS territory mistreated by the ISIS cadres.

“So one time this hisbah car is driven by a Tunisian mujahid. He saw a woman in the market who was covered properly and was shopping, doing her own business. He was following her in his car and stopped the car when she stopped to purchase things, but she wouldn’t pay him any attention. He kept stalking her like this three or four times until she got home. After a while, he went to her home and knocked at the door. Someone opened the door and he said, ‘Salaam Alekium [Peace be Upon You]. The man who opened the door, as it is a local custom, invited him in to talk and offered him tea.

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