Yazidi women once held as sex slaves sue IS wife

Accused of aiding, detention in 2014 rapes

Amal Clooney has launched a lawsuit on behalf of five Yazidi women against the most senior female member of the Islamic State, in an attempt to secure justice that has so far eluded the minority group.

The women were raped and enslaved by IS fighters after being captured from the Yazidis’ homeland in northern Iraq in 2014.

The civil suit, the first case of its kind in the United States, was filed this week at the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia against Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, also known as Umm Sayyaf, who is accused of holding the five women as slaves in her home in Syria.

Umm Sayyaf was captured in 2015 by U.S. Delta Force soldiers on the mission where they killed her husband, Abu Sayyaf, an IS financier, and is being held by Kurdish authorities in Iraq.

“The criminal case in the U.S. represents the only vehicle to hold Umm Sayyaf to account for her horrific crimes against our clients. They have already waited too long for their day in court,” said Clooney, a human rights lawyer who has represented Yazidis in other cases.

She has accused government leaders and the United Nations of failing to bring the extremists responsible for the genocide to justice.

There have been few legal victories for the Yazidis, who were kidnapped, enslaved and killed in their thousands when jihadists marauded Iraq and Syria as they forged their caliphate.

While IS suspects have been charged and sentenced, they have not specifically pertained to crimes against the Yazidis, which have been recognized as genocide by the UN.

The Sayyafs enslaved the Yazidi girls at their home in al-shaddadi, Syria, along with one of the women’s 15-year-old daughters, other Yazidis and Kayla Mueller, a captured American aid worker — where all were subjected to torture, rape, beatings and starvation.

It is alleged that Umm Sayyaf routinely led the women and girls to be raped by IS militants, including by her husband and Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph and leader of IS. Mueller was killed, and the teenage daughter was never seen again.

Umm Sayyaf, 31, who is said to have co-operated with the CIA and Kurdish intelligence in the hunt for Baghdadi, has never faced trial for any of the alleged crimes.

The U.S. government in 2015 filed a criminal complaint against her solely for knowingly conspiring to provide material support to IS, but the case has been dormant since.

“The U.S. has never expanded the charges against her or sought her transfer from Iraq,” said Daniel Mclaughlin, senior staff attorney at the Centre for Justice and Accountability, which is helping bring the case.