When it comes to the atrocities it has been committing for years now, the Islamic State (ISIS) has proven that sky's the limit.
In yet another shocking report, a 26-year-old Sunni Muslim mother named Hanan has revealed that her ISIS captors blindfolded and beat her. They then tied her arms using plastic cables, which they looped on a beam suspending her. Then one of them raped her—in front of her children.
"The same guy raped me every day for the next month without a blindfold, always in front of my children," Hanan was quoted as saying by the persecution watchdog group Human Rights Watch (HRH).
Hanan was one of six Sunni Muslim women who were able to escape from ISIS captivity after being raped repeatedly by the militants. HRH researchers recently interviewed them in Kirkuk, where they fled from the town of Hawija, 125 km south of Mosul, Iraq.
The persecution watchdog group said it was the first time they documented rape cases where Sunni Muslim women were the victims and Shiite Muslim ISIS militants were the perpetrators. HRH and other organisations have already documented numerous ISIS rape cases where the victims were Yazidi women and other minorities, including Christians.
Hanan said she was arrested with her children and 50 other women in April 2016 by ISIS militants. They were then locked up in an abandoned house.
On the first day of their captivity, she said an ISIS guard took her and her daughter, 8, and sons, 6 and 3, to a separate room. She was accused of being an apostate because her husband had fled ISIS-controlled territory.
She was then asked to remarry the local ISIS leader, but she replied, "Kill me, because I refuse to do that," HRW reported.
That angered her ISIS captors who then subjected her to daily torture and rape in front of her children for a month.
Hanan said she tried to kill herself to end her suffering but failed.
The five other Sunni Muslim women who escaped from ISIS captivity also spoke to HRW about the rape, torture and other abuses they suffered at the hands of the jihadists.
Just last week, a captured ISIS fighter virtually validated the reported atrocities the jihadists are committing on their captives, saying that he does not see any anything wrong with raping women and killing other defenceless captives.
"This is normal," said Amar Hussein, a 22-year-old captured ISIS militant, who was presented recently by Kurdish intelligence authorities to journalists in his cell in Sulaimaniya, Iraq.
