Fighters use web to sell sex slaves

As the Islamic State comes under heightened pressure in Iraq and Syria, female captives appear to be suffering, too — sold and traded by cash-strapped fighters, subjected to shortages of food and medicine, and put at risk by military strikes, terrorism experts and human rights groups say.

Social-media sites used by Islamic State fighters in recent months have included numerous accounts of the buying and selling of sex slaves, as well as the promulgation of formal rules for dealing with them. The guidelines cover such topics as whether it’s possible to have sex with prepubescent prisoners — yes, the Islamic State’s legal experts say — and how severely a slave can be beaten.

But before the May 20 Facebook post, there were no known instances of Islamic State fighters posting photographs of female captives offered for sale. The photos of the two unidentified women appeared briefly before being deleted by Facebook, but the images were captured by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit group that monitors jihadists’ social-media accounts.

“We have seen a great deal of brutality, but the content that ISIS has been disseminating over the past two years has surpassed it all for sheer evil,” said Steven Stalinsky, the institute’s executive director, using the common acronym for the Islamic State. “Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this.”

The Islamic State’s leaders have historically used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to attract recruits and spread propaganda, but in the past year American companies have blocked jihadist accounts.

Facebook in particular has garnered high marks from watchdog groups for reacting quickly to terrorists’ efforts to use its pages. But at the same time, the militants also have become more agile, leaping quickly from one social-media platform to another and opening new accounts as older ones are shut down.

After initial denials, the Islamic State last year issued statements acknowledging the use of sex slaves and defending the practice as consistent with ancient Islamic traditions, provided that the women are nonMuslims captured in battle or members of Muslim sects that the terrorist group regards as apostates.