Islamic State says it has made captured Yazidi women concubines

BAGHDAD — Islamic State boasted Sunday that it had enslaved women from an Iraqi minority group in order to use them as concubines, as a rights organization detailed teenagers being bought and sold by fi ghters for $ 1,000 and more. An English- language propaganda magazine for Islamic State said that Yazidi women and children were considered spoils of war after they were captured as the militants seized their towns and villages. It was the fi rst confi rmation from the group of widespread allegations of detention and sexual abuse against Yazidi women. Hundreds of thousands of members of the ancient sect were displaced as Islamic State swept through the Sinjar area of northern Iraq in August. Those who fl ed said that while men had been massacred, hundreds of women and children had been detained. After detaining the Yazidis, Islamic State systematically separated young women and teenage girls from their families, New York- based Human Rights Watch said in a report that also came out on Sunday. “The Islamic State’s litany of horrifi c crimes against the Yazidis in Iraq only keeps growing,” said Fred Abrahams, a special adviser at HRW. The women and children were divided among fi ghters according to Islamic law, the Islamic State magazine, Dabiq, said. “The enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers,” it continued. The article argued that although Christians and Jews can be off ered the chance to pay a tax or convert, Yazidis, as polytheists, can be enslaved if captured during war. None of the Yazidi women interviewed by HRW said they had been raped, but sexual assault is deeply stigmatized in the conservative sect. One interviewed by the group said she’d seen “brides” taken from both a school and prison she was held in. “Some were as young as 12 or 13, and up to age 20,” she said. Meanwhile, Islamic State captured a military training camp in western Iraq on Monday, inching closer to full control of the restive Anbar province, as a spate of deadly bombings shook Baghdad, hitting mostly Shiite neighbourhoods and leaving at least 30 dead.