Daesh Mufti Shifa Ali, mastermind behind ISIS’ sex slavery, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court today
SPECIAL REPORT BY DEVON PHILLIPS (@DEVONINMENA)
Years ago, I went with a group from Jordan to Duhok, Iraq to help document stories of Ezidis who escaped back to Iraqi Kurdistan after their capture during the Sinjar massacre. Their lives were horrific beyond comprehension in ISIS-held territory. From sunup to sundown for nearly a week, we heard story after story of the buying, selling, rape, severe abuse, and cavalier murder of human beings (many children) sold in slave markets. (See adjacent photo for the questions we asked.)
Notice we didn't ask, "Did you have children in captivity?" we had to ask, "How many?" Heartbreakingly, many women admitted to killing their own children, because they didn't want them growing up the property of ISIS fighters.
It was not unusual for women and children to be sold many times, sometimes on a daily basis, in what basically amounted to prostitution. These survivors told their stories with a blank detachment of those who had given themselves up for dead long ago. Often, we and our translators would be opening weeping, while the storyteller would remain matter-of-fact.
Many captured Ezidis were freed when the Peshmerga retook the area where they had been held captive, but some were ransomed by family and some by the Iraqi government. (I don't want to even think about how much money ISIS made from ransoms.)
A particularly surreal moment was when a mother brought out a RECEIPT that two ISIS fighters had given her when she ransomed back one of her 3 daughters. She told me that she had seen an ad for her daughter on a ransom Facebook group.
She had a receipt for her daughter.
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Many of the boys kidnapped were missing limbs, as they had been used as child soldiers, and were only rescued by being captured in battle. Needless to say, I finished the week with a very heavy heart. There were so, so many stories, and they were a minuscule fraction of victims in this nightmare situation. The whole experience reinforced the bleak & pervading reality of evil, the bottomless abyss of human depravity.
When I saw the news today that Daesh Mufti Shifa Ali, a trafficker in humans, was sentenced to death by a court in Mosul, it all came flooding back to me. Though I cannot bring myself to rejoice in his upcoming death, I am glad that he will not hurt anyone else, and that there will perhaps be a measure of closure for his countless victims.
Though there is some measure of justice, however, it can never cover the number and severity of the crimes that Daesh committed and continues to commit against innocents. How we need a Savior, how desperate we are for a Messiah to rule people with righteousness and equity, and how completely incapable we are of achieving that as a species.
Shifa Ali's sentence is a fresh reminder. Maranatha.
