A Yazidi woman who survived seven years of enslavement by Islamic State commanders has shared the harrowing details of her captivity, which included sexual abuse, torture, and being held by the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
From Childhood to Captivity: The 2014 Genocide
Sipan Khalil was just 15 years old in 2014 when ISIS militants stormed her Yazidi village of Kocho in northern Iraq. The United Nations later recognised the brutal campaign as a genocide against the Yazidi people. Torn from her family, she was taken to the terrorist group's then-capital, Raqqa in Syria, and sold into slavery.
For the next seven years, her life became a cycle of being sold between high-ranking ISIS officials, forced into marriages, and subjected to relentless sexual violence and physical torture. The now 26-year-old has recounted her experiences in a series of recent interviews, offering a chilling insight into the inner workings of the so-called caliphate.
Enslaved by the ISIS Elite: Baghdadi and Adnani
Sipan's ordeal placed her in the direct custody of the terror group's most notorious figures. She was forced to work as a domestic slave in the residence of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, where she cared for his children. She described how Baghdadi committed assaults against "very young girls," some as young as eight years old.
Her captivity took a more severe turn when Baghdadi and one of his wives discovered a secret notebook in which Sipan had been documenting ISIS crimes. In retaliation, Baghdadi attempted to rape her while his wife held her down, only stopping when coalition airstrikes began. He later locked her in a basement, deprived her of food and sunlight, and tortured her with an electric shock baton during interrogations about her diary.
She was later handed to ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who stripped her of her name, forcing her to call herself 'Baqiyah'. In his house, she witnessed other Yazidi slaves being taken one by one to be raped. "They came back like corpses. They never said anything," she recalled. Eventually, Adnani's abuse reached her, and she described being violently and repeatedly raped by him for months.
Sipan was also forced by Adnani to watch the infamous execution of captured Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kaseasbeh, who was burned alive in a cage in early 2015. "I had seen decapitated heads, corpses, but that day I entered a new world," she said of the event that shocked the globe.
A Daring Escape and Path to Freedom
In 2017, Sipan was married off to a 22-year-old Lebanese ISIS fighter, Abu Azam Lubnani, whom she described as an "evil man" who proudly showed her videos of himself executing prisoners. When coalition warplanes struck their building, Sipan survived but learned during her recovery that she was pregnant with Lubnani's child.
After ISIS's defeat, Lubnani and a smuggler tried to traffic her to Lebanon. Their vehicle hit a landmine, badly injuring the men. Seizing her chance, Sipan took Lubnani's gun and shot both him and the smuggler dead. "If I hadn’t killed them, I would never be free. It was my last chance," she stated, expressing no guilt for her actions.
She then wandered the desert with her three-month-old son, who tragically died from his injuries. A local Bedouin family found her and hid her for two years. After saving for a phone, she located her family on social media, who had believed her killed in the 2017 airstrike and had dug a symbolic grave for her.
With the Bedouins' help, she returned to Iraq and was officially freed and reunited with her family in 2021 following a joint intelligence operation by the Western Nineveh Operations Command.
Rebuilding a Life Shattered by Genocide
Sipan, who also uses the surname 'Ajo', now lives in Berlin. She studies and works with the Farida Organization, a human rights group founded by Yazidi survivors. She also cares for her surviving siblings, as much of her family was wiped out during the genocide.
"They killed my father, they killed my brother, they killed many of my uncles, and they killed my cousins," she told Rudaw. Despite rebuilding her life, she says recent violence against Kurdish communities in Syria has triggered painful memories. "It reminded me of those days in 2014 when they attacked us Yazidis... I say this is a recurring genocide," she concluded.
