Raqqa's Al-Khansa brigade, an all-female Islamic State police squad, continues to wreak havoc after reportedly torturing a woman who was breastfeeding in public.
Al-Khansa brigade is ISIS's female religious group in Raqqa that strictly enforces militant rules and punishing women who defy their terms. They are seen patrolling the city with weapons concealed under their religious robes and gained notoriety when dozens of British women supported the Islamic insurgency and joined the police unit in the past couple of months.
According to reports, the police unit tortured a young mother by clamping her chest with a spiked clamp – a bear trap-style device called a "biter". She apparently suffered the punishment because she was breastfeeding her baby in the city centre.
The 24-year old mother, given the name Batol to protect her identity, told sources that she was caught off guard when the Khansa battalion arrested her while she was buying in the market, the Daily Mail reports.
The arrest was on the grounds that she was wearing a transparent niqab - an Islamic face covering – which they said did not meet their Sharia law requirement.
Batol recounts, 'They took me to the 'Hesba' headquarters in the city, and escorted me to the torture chamber, then they asked me to choose between a whip or a 'biter'.
'I did not know what a "biter" was and I thought it is a reduced sentence, I was afraid of whipping, so I choose the 'biter', then they brought a sharp object that has a lot of teeth and held me, placing it on my chest and pressing it strongly, I screamed from pain and I was badly injured. They later took me to the hospital.'
She told sources that the brutality destroyed her femininity and she cannot see how women in her community can continue to live under such horrific circumstances.
Batol added that she was not the only woman who was tortured using the "biter".
