Days after the ISIS leader Bakr al-Baghdad died after US military launched an operation drove him to his suicide, Nobel laureate Nadia Muran on Wednesday, October 30 said the Islamic State militants continue to commit severe human rights violations.
Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi woman survivor who was held captive and raped by Islamic State (ISIS) fighters in Mosul, Iraq, 2014 won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to end sexual violence in regions of conflicts.
Speaking at the 10th anniversary of the establishment of a UN special representative to focus on sexual violence in conflict, she said after hearing about Baghdadi's death, she spoke to her six sisters-in-law and family members who are also former captives.
"At first I talked to my sisters-in-law... Everyone was saying: 'OK, but this is just Baghdadi, how about all these ISIS?'" she was quoted as saying by Reuters. "How about those that raped us? They sold us, they still have our girls, they still have our children - about 300,000 Yazidis missing, we don't know anything about them."
About 5,000 people from the Yazidi community, a religious minority in northern Iraq were subjected to genocidal killing by the Islamic State in 2014 according to UN reports. Known as the Shinjar massacre, 5,000 people from the Yazidi community were killed and about 10,000 women and children were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery.
Several of Murad's brothers were killed by IS militants during the mass killings. The UN declared the mass killings of Yazidi's in Syria and Iraq as a genocide in 2016. The destruction of the community which follows the monotheistic religion was carried off as the Yazidis were considered to be 'devil-worshippers.' The faith has elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam.
The US military raid on Baghdadi called 'Operation Kayla Mueller' was named after the 26-year-old humanitarian aid worker from Arizona who was kidnapped and held as the ISIS leader's sexual slave. She was killed in 2015 after 18 months of captivity.
About thousands of ISIS militants continue to inflict torture, said Murad "So it wasn't only Baghdadi, we have to know there is thousands of ISIS-like Baghdadi ... and they are not giving up."
