Image copyright Barham Ali/ Bas Information Image caption “I by no means believed i would see something like this,” Ashwaq advised the BBC
A Yazidi teenager sold into slavery through Islamic State has advised the BBC of her horror after she escaped to Germany, simplest to return face-to-face along with her captor in the street.
Ashwaq used to be best 14 whilst Islamic State opponents stormed into northern Iraq, together with the heartland of the Yazidi people.
They took lots of ladies as sex slaves, including Ashwaq – sold for $100 to a man named Abu Humam.
Raped and beaten, she controlled to flee three months later after which went to Germany with her mom and one brother.
A few months ago, at the side road outside a grocery store, she heard anyone call out her title. She says it used to be Abu Humam – and he said he knew where she lived.
“I by no means in my life believed that i might see one thing like this in Germany,” she told the BBC.
“I left my family and my united states and went to Germany to put out of your mind the beating and the pain. The final thing I anticipated was to fulfill my IS captor and that he might recognise everything approximately me.”
who’re the Yazidis? Iraq’s minorities fear for his or her long term
‘It goes instantly in your center… you can not consider’
Germany’s federal prosecutor says Ashwaq said the incident to the police five days after she mentioned it happened. Ashwaq says she instructed investigators the whole lot, together with her harrowing experiences in Iraq.
Officers made an e-fit of the suspect and instructed her to contact the police instantly if she saw Abu Humam again.
She says she also advised the police to check the grocery store’s CCTV, but says this didn’t happen.
“I waited a whole month,” she says, but received no information.
Frightened that she might see her captor once more and wishing to be reunited with 4 of her sisters who had considering the fact that been rescued from IS, Ashwaq back to northern Iraq, abandoning town of Schwäbisch Gmünd the place she had hoped to start a brand new life.
“when you have not been through it, you won’t understand what it is like… it goes immediately for your center,” she mentioned. “Whilst a lady is raped by means of IS, you cannot imagine what it is like whilst you see this man once more.”
‘No Longer an isolated case’
Frauke Köhler, a spokeswoman for Germany’s most sensible court docket, says police made every effort to locate Abu Hummam the use of the e-fit image and Ashwaq’s testimony, but have been not able to find him.
By the time they contacted her once more in June this yr as a part of the investigation, Ashwaq had already left for Iraq.
However, activists in Germany say her case would possibly not be an isolated incident.
Düzen Tekkal, an activist and the founding father of Hawar.Help, a Berlin-based supplier which campaigns for Yazidi rights, says she has heard of a few cases the place female Yazidi refugees known IS warring parties in Germany.
Ashwaq herself says she heard identical money owed from different Yazidi girls who had escaped the jihadists.
Now Not all instances are pronounced to the authorities, however.
‘i’d never go to Germany again’
Back in Kurdistan now dwelling in a Yazidi camp, Ashwaq still desires to continue her training however each she and her family additionally need to go away the country.
“We Are frightened of the folks of IS,” her father instructed the BBC.
However her experience in Germany has had a profound have an effect on on Ashwaq.
“If the world was once destroyed, i’d now not visit Germany once more,” she stated.
Like many Yazidis, her family is now applying to live in Australia as part of a unique programme for girls abducted by means of IS.
