Putting ISIS to sleep: 12yo Yazidi girl uses sleeping pills to escape terror group

A 12-year-old Yazidi girl secretly slipped sleeping pills into her Islamic State captor’s tea to escape. The girl and her aunt were being held as slaves by the jihadist group west of Mosul, before they were able to escape to Kurdish-controlled areas.

The escape was confirmed by Vian Dakhil, a Kurdish Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, who told the Kurdish BasNews agency that a 12-year-old girl and her 17-year-old aunt had managed to escape from their Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) captives by spiking their captors tea with sleeping pills. 

Dakhil said that the two girls were being held by Islamic State forces at a house in the Tel Afar district, which is west of Mosul, Iraqi’s third largest city. They were held for about four months before the pair decided to make their daring escape. 

The Kurdish politician revealed that the girls had asked their guards to give them sleeping pills to help them get off to sleep. “Then, they put the medicine in militants’ tea and secured their escape after they fell asleep,” Dakhil said.

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After the jihadists dosed off, the girls were able to make their escape to areas held by Kurdish forces. The 12-year-old girl was reunited with her mother and sister, but two or three of her siblings are still being held by Islamic State forces. 

Many of those kept captive by the jihadist terror group have not been so lucky. Women held captive are often kept as sex slaves, while those who refuse are killed. 

"At least 250 girls have so far been executed by IS for refusing to accept the practice of sexual jihad, and sometimes the families of the girls were also executed for rejecting to submit to IS's request," Said Mamuzini, a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official from Mosul, told BasNews.

Ghayas Surchi, a PUK official from Mosul, told BasNews that human rights are being widely violated in all territories being held by the jihadist group, particularly the rights of women as they are seen as commodities and they have no choice in choosing their spouses. 

The Yazidi people are a religious minority in Iraq. They first fell victim to IS in August 2014, as the terror group overwhelmed Mount Sinjar, the homeland of thousands of Yazidis. 

A UN report published in January stated that Islamic State forces are holding around 3,500 people as slaves in Iraq, the majority of whom are women and children from the Yazidi community. 

The terror group argues that capturing Yazidi women is justified because they are not Muslims. According to a pamphlet released by Islamic State at the end of 2014, members are permitted to have sex with Yazidi women, especially if those captured are virgins. If the woman is not a virgin, the manual reads that “her uterus must be purified" before intercourse. 

According to the UN, Islamic State jihadists have abducted thousands of women and girls as young as 12 years old, selling them as sex slaves or giving them to fighters as rewards.