In the mountains of Northern Iraq, these are the survivors of what the UN has called attempted genocide. They are members of the Yazidi faith. And they now live on this hillside in the mud. Looking at them now, it's hard to believe that they fled here during the heat of last summer, when untold number died, as Islamic State fighters advanced into Iraq from Syria.

00-34
Woman:

"We have been here for 5 months and more than 9 or 10 days. We are in a very tough situation. Thousands of children died from thirst. That's why we escaped."

00-49
This is the story of those Yazidis who did not escape. The thousands of women and girls abducted, imprisoned and sold into sexual slavery.

01-03
Man:

"You know what happened to us, don't you? You don't know that thousands of our girls are in their hands? Now you know the rest of the story."

01-19
(Archive)

It was in August last year that around 300,000 Yazidis fled from their ancient homeland in the Sinjar region of Iraq. Some took refuge high up on Sinjar mountain,where we filmed Iraqi helicopters trying to rescue as many as they could. Yazidis crushing one another in an awful stampede to escape.

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Islamic State fighters regard Yazidis as heretics, worse than Christians or Jews. And stories quickly emerged of hundreds of men being executed and thousands of women sold into slavery.

02-00
Now living in a refugee camp in Iraq's Kurdish North, these women are from the farming village of Kucho. Where invading jihadists forced hundreds of them to convert to Islam before auctioning them off as slaves.

02-16
They won't talk here but they've agreed to meet us in a house where it feels safe. Yazidi faith forbids them from having sex before marriage. Yet some of them have been made pregnant by the IS fighters who bought them. Hakimeh is 19 and had just left school when she and the others were captured in Kucho and held prisoner for three appalling months.

02-43
Hakimeh Jelo

"They raided our houses and surrounded our village. IS put us in the school. They took all our gold and jewellery. They separated the men, the girls, the women and children. They took most of the men and they killed them. Then they separated the women from the girls. Then they took us to Syria.

03-19
"They sold us among themselves, they treated us very badly, they were beating us, making us do all sorts of things by force. We suffered a lot."

03-29
(You Tube video seq)
03-31
Far from hiding their crimes, this IS video shows fighters boasting about them. Men from Iraq and the Gulf bragging about buying Yazidi women.

"What do you want? Today is market day, distribution is today," says this man.

It all seems like a joke. One says the price goes up if women have blue eyes. "Can he take 2 Yazidi women at once?" this man asks.

04-08
(You Tube video seq)
04-10
The militants also filmed this mass conversion of Yazidi men they'd captured, no doubt at gunpoint. You can see the fear on their faces. "They are coming to Islam in droves," the video says before interviewing new arrivals. "We were in the dark" says this prisoner, "but now we see the light".
04-34
Hakimeh was one of a group of 130 women forced to convert. And she says the shame of abandoning her 7000 year old religion horrified her more than being sold.

04-47
"We were completely outraged. We wanted to die and we were praying to God at that moment. We were asking them to kill us. We were pulling their guns towards our heads, but they refused. We would have preferred to die at that moment. When we were captured by them we prayed to God that we wanted to die."

05-07
She's identified this man as the jihadist who bought her. His name is Khaled Sharrouf. He's from Sydney in Australia, where he has a criminal record for terrorist offences. He's now believed to be living in Raqqa in Syria with his wife and children, where he kept 7 Yazidis, trading them as sex slaves among his men.

05-31
"We were cleaning their house and cooking for them. He would go to the fight and when he came back he would give each of us to a man, but in the end we escaped."

05-46
"We gained the trust of his wife and she thought we wouldn't escape. The man was not at home, he was away fighting, he didn't come back for four nights. Before he came we escaped."

06-04
These women fear being ostracised from their community for speaking out. But the crime against their people is so monstrous that they want the world to know it. Jalileh aged 30 was also captured in Kucho, taken to Syria and ordered to look after the youngest girls.

06-24
Jalileh Amo

"If the girl refused to do what they wanted, they would break her arm or crack her skull. Then they would return her. And after she got better, another man took her."

06-37
"I have seen with my own eyes how they sold 7 or 8 year old girls who were bought by 30 to 40 year old men."

06-48
"They said forget your God, forget your family, be grateful to Allah you are with us. We will marry you off and give you a house and you will have everything. You will start enjoying life. We said we don't want anything we just want our religion, but they said forget your God. We are your God."

07-17
The Northern Iraqi village of Lalish is holy to Yazidis and it's where some of the women have sought sanctuary. They say others still in captivity have committed suicide. An orphanage is being built for Yazidi children who've lost all their relatives. But tolerance has its limits - and those children still to be born, the babies of women raped by Islamic State fighters  - will not be made welcome here.

07-52
Baba Chaowish
Yazidi religious leader

"After the baby is born in hospital, it will be handed to the authorities. And the authorities will decide what to do with the baby. It is not our job. But we won't accept the baby being killed because that is not in our beliefs. The mother of that baby will return to her house and continue her life the same as before. She will marry. And we have encouraged young men to marry them as well.

08-27
But how can life ever be the same?  Amsheh Pajo is 32 and has just arrived in a refugee camp. It is the first time she has seen her relatives who had given her up for dead. For six months she was missing as an Islamic State slave in Syria. Until one owner took pity on her and her five children and let them go. Though Amsheh's husband was one of around 400 men shot by the jihadists in Kucho village.

09-09
Amsheh Pajo

"My husband is dead but I thank God we are free now. We suffered a lot. Very bad times. We were imprisoned, we were tortured. Everything happened to us."

09-23
"I have nothing to think about now. I only think about my husband. He was 30 years old. He worked very hard to look after us. He worked for six years to build our house. He had no time to enjoy it."

09-46
However bleak it is here, these women say there is no going back to Kucho. They blame neighbouring Arab villages for colluding in their capture. And their families have been scattered to the four winds, or killed.

10-04
Jalileh Amo

"I haven't seen my mother, my father, my sister or my brother. My family had around a hundred men. Now there are just four of them and they are injured.  There are around fifty women and girls and four injured men and only me in charge."

10-24
Hakimeh Jelo

"Of course my relatives were happy to see me and I was happy to see them but was also upset because I haven't seen many of them. My mother and father and brothers and their children are lost. In all, 22 men are lost. Till now we still don't know anything about them. Not a single phone call or anything else. We don't know if they are dead or alive."

11-04
The stigma of what has happened to these women is so great that many cannot talk of it openly. Yet these Yazidi women have. Because untold thousands are still trapped. And if those who've escaped don't bear witness to sexual slavery and attempted genocide, then nobody else will.


11-27
Ends