Six years ago, at the age of 26, Laila Talo Khuder Alali was sold as a sex slave eight times to men of different nationalities by militants of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Standing in a hotel auditorium in India’s commercial hub of Mumbai to receive an award in the name of St Mother Teresa, she told of how her husband and a child were still missing.
Several of her family members had been killed, but eight were rescued.
Those missing are among more than 3,000 people known as ‘Yazidis’ still in ISIS captivity, Alali said when receiving the Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice on Oct. 21.
The militants of ISIS are accused of perpetrating genocide against the Yazidi, a religious minority group in northern Iraq.
Yazidism combines elements of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. ISIS, also known simply as Islamic State, seeks to wipe out their faith. “We faced torture, sexual slavery and unimaginable acts,” the 30-year-old woman recounted at the award ceremony in Mumbai.
