The opposition group, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, is reporting the use of a new torture device on women who disobey sharia law by the all-female Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) brigade, al-Khansa, in the terrorist group’s “capital.”
The brigades have been using a bear trap they call a “biter” on women’s breasts. It is responsible for “causing severe pain and wounds [which] may lead women in some cases to be transported to the hospital.” A woman, known only as Batol, told the opposition group the brigade arrested her as she breastfed her baby in public. According to the Daily Mail:
I was in the market buying a few items when Khansa battalion came and arrested me on the grounds that the niqab [Islamic face covering] which I was wearing does not meet Sharia requirement because it was transparent[.]
[T]hey took me to the “Hesba” headquarters in the city, and escorted me to the torture chamber, then they asked me to choose between a whip or a “biter”[.]
I did not know what a “biter” was and I thought it is a reduced sentence, I was afraid of whipping, so I choose the “biter”, then they brought a sharp object that has a a lot of teeth and held me, placing it on my chest and pressing it strongly, I screamed from pain and I was badly injured. They later took me to the hospital.
I felt then that my femininity has been destroyed completely, we no longer afford to live this way, I was not the only one that was tortured with this instrument, there were a lot of women in the headquarters and their situation was tragic.
Sami, a 25-year-old man, told the group about his time in detention:
ISIS’s Hesba bureau arrested me on charges of smoking and they took me to their headquarters and then put me to the torture chamber[.]
[T]he room floor was full of blood, and then they flogged me 40 times and threw me in a cell, there were a lot of detainees, when I looked at them I saw death in their eyes and their situation was pitiful[.]
[D]uring the three nights I spent at the headquarters, I heard the screams of women and men who ISIS was torturing.
[T]o hear the screams of the people of my city when they are being tortured at the hands of strangers is a torture of another type, which has destroyed my dignity.
It seems that this city is no longer ours, and we have become strangers here, then I began to seriously consider leaving it.
The group is named after al-Khansa, “a devout Muslim who dedicated poetry and eulogies to jihad fighters after losing four sons in a war against Persia at the time of the Prophet Mohammed.” In August, The International Business Times reported the majority of the women are of Chechen descent, but women from Afghanistan and Yemen have also joined. There are allegedly over 50 women in the gang in Raqqa. These women “are wives of immigrants in Syria, of Tunisian, Moroccan, French and British nationalities.” British women Glaswegian Aqsa Mahmood, 20, and Khadijah Dare, 22, are among the women in the al-Khansa brigade.
Even though the Islamic State treats women as second-class citizens, some Western women have flocked to Iraq and Syria to join its forces. Women associated with the terrorists openly declared they wished they were the ones who murdered American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Salma and Zahra Halane, 16-year-old twins from Manchester, England, went to Syria to join their older brother. Both girls married Islamic State fighters, and one said she wants to be a doctor for the militants.
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