Yazidi husband reveals how he rescued his wife from life as an ISIS sex slave by hiring a hitman

A Yazidi man whose wife was kidnapped and tortured as an ISIS sex slave has spoken of how he managed to free her by hiring an assassin to kill her captor.

Huzni Murad’s wife Jilian was taken alongside his sister Nadia, who also escaped and is now fighting for justice alongside Amal Clooney, in 2014 as ISIS attacked their villages in Sinjar, Iraqi Kurdistan, and captured 5,000 women.

The 26-year-old was taken to Mosul where she was held captive by an ISIS fighter, beaten and raped, for 30 months until Huzni, 37, was able to rescue her.

After stealing a mobile phone, she was able to contact Huzni. Having feared her husband may have been among the thousands massacred by ISIS, she burst into tears upon hearing his voice.

‘We were crying and crying, then laughing, then crying. We never thought we would see each other again,’ she told The Mirror.

‘I had lost hope, but he told me, ‘You will come back, and you will be loved, and I will be here for you’.’

Huzni hired a hitman to target the ISIS fighter holding Jilian hostage, and the assassin killed him by driving into his car.

The hitman and his associates were then able to smuggle Jilian out of Mosul and eventually back to Huzni.

‘I had lost hope, but he told me, ‘You will come back, and you will be loved, and I will be here for you’.’

Mr Murad’s sister Nadia has since become public face of their people’s suffering, and is now set to marry the man who helped her overcome her ordeal.

Nadia Murad was repeatedly beaten and gang-raped by fanatics after being kidnapped at the age of 21 from her village in northern Iraq in 2014.

But after a daring escape, which saw her leap over the garden wall of her captor’s house in Mosul, she was offered asylum in Germany and has spoken to the UN about her horrifying experiences.

It has now emerged that Ms Murad, who runs a group aiming to rebuild the shattered Sinjar region, is to marry Abid Shamdeen, a former interpreter for the US army.

Shamdeen helped her recover and, taking to Twitter, Ms Murad said of her engagement: ‘Yesterday was a special day for @AbidShamdeen & I. We are very thankful and humbled for all the wishes & support from our family & friends.

‘The struggle of our people brought us together & we will continue this path together. Thank you for your support everyone!’

Shamdeen added: ‘We met during very difficult times in both our lives but we managed to find love while fighting a huge fight.’

Ms Murad, now in her mid 20s, was one of about 7,000 women and girls captured by the hard-line Sunni Muslim fighters who view Yazidis as devil worshippers.

Last year, she shared her harrowing experience of being captured, beaten and sold as a sex slave by ISIS militants in a new book.

In ‘The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State’, Murad recounted her life in a northern Iraqi village, her brutal captivity, tension-filled escape and feelings of betrayal and abandonment by those who failed to help.

Murad is Yazidi, a religious minority who live in an uneasy existence with their Muslim neighbors.

Yazidi men and older women, including five of her eight brothers and her 61-year-old mother, were killed. The younger women and girls were held in captivity for sex.

‘It never gets easier to tell your story. Each time you speak it, you relive it,’ Murad wrote in her book.

‘[But] my story, told honestly and matter-of-factly, is the best weapon I have against terrorism, and I plan on using it until those terrorists are put on trial.’

United Nations investigators estimate more than 5,000 Yazidis were rounded up and slaughtered in the 2014 attack, and UN experts have said ISIS was committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq.

Murad was abducted at age 21 from the village of Kocho near Sinjar, an area that is home to about 400,000 Yazidis.

‘Our Sunni neighbors could have come to us and tried to help,’ she writes. ‘But they didn’t.’

Murad was registered as a slave and even had a photo ID that would be dispersed among the fighters if she were to run away.

She now lives in Germany and has become a campaigner on behalf of the Yazidi community. In 2017, she became a UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking.

Source: Daily Mail