islamic state watch

ISIS’s Brutal Treatment of Prisoners Includes Waterboarding, Sex Slavery

Photo: Reuters/Corbis

New details have emerged today about the brutal treatment endured by prisoners captured by ISIS, the Sunni jihadist group. The Washington Post reports that at least four captives held by ISIS were subject to waterboarding, a torture tactic they modeled off the American CIA. James Foley, an American journalist who was beheaded on-camera by the terror group last week, was reportedly waterboarded during the early part of his captivity.

The circumstances for female prisoners aren’t any better. In Iraq, ISIS has turned the Badush prison in the northern city of Mosul into the headquarters for a horrific sex-slavery operation, reports the Daily Beast. The captured women, most of whom are believed to be Yazidi, are being held at the prison, where they are gang-raped and forced to convert to Islam so they can be sold as brides. Some of the women are reportedly teenagers as young as 14.

To further compound the psychological torture for both victims and their families, the Beast reports that ISIS has also forced some women to call their families and describe in excruciating detail the horrible circumstances they’re forced to endure. 

Activists working in the region to free the women are growing desperate for help and have begun soliciting individual donations from locals in attempts to keep the women from sex slavery.

ISIS Waterboards, Rapes Prisoners