The ordeal on top of the mountain

Hundreds of Yazidi women taken by ISIS and held in a secret prison where they have been raped and sold off like property are facing an equally dire fate.

Badush prison, where the women are enslaved, has become a literal house of horrors since the Islamic State seized control of the area.

Since ISIS seized Mosul in June it has used the prison to hold captured women as sex slaves, according to multiple reports, before trafficking them to third parties. Some of these women are the Yazidis who were taken during the fall of Sinjar, but they are not alone. While the number of Yazidi women have been estimated in the hundreds, sources in Iraq say that the number is even higher and includes members of other minority groups, like Turkomans and Christians.

Survivors who managed to escape from ISIS say the women held in its prison in Mosul face two fates: Those who convert to Islam are sold as brides to Islamist fighters for prices as low as $25, and ranging up to $150. Those who do not convert face daily rape and a slow death.

Yazidi temple in Iraq

Some imprisoned women have been forced by militants to call their families. The mother of one woman still held captive told The Daily Beast about the call she received from her daughter. She was forced to listen as her daughter detailed being raped by dozens of men over the course of a few hours. Still other women testified that multiple children had been born under these conditions, with the newborns ripped away from their mother’s arms to fates unknown.

“It’s complete psychological warfare. These families are already destroyed by the loss of their loved one’s, and now ISIS has them calling to tell them of the atrocities they have suffered!”

Yazidi temple in Lalish

“It’s sick,” Zangana said, while choking back tears. “[ISIS] went so far as to force the local beauticians to come in and dress them up, putting makeup on them. Then telling them to instruct the women to be submissive to their new husbands.”

One Yazidi woman who escaped from ISIS told The Daily Beast that many of those held were teenagers, some as young as 14.

That’s not as bad as it gets by Islamic standards. There are plenty of Salafis who are for marrying off girls from the age of puberty. And even earlier.

The women calling are telling us that many of these men hail from Chechnya,” a region in the Russian Federation known for Islamist fighters, who are being identified by their open use of the Russian language and red beards. Other women who had been held in the prison supported these claims identified “British and Dutch nationals,” too, Zangana told The Daily Beast.