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CNN Interviews Yazidi Girl Kidnapped and Raped by Islamic State Terrorists

October 30, 2014

A 19-year old Kurdish Yazidi girl who was kidnapped by the Islamic State recounted a harrowing tale of how IS members systematically enslave and rape young girls captured by the terrorist group.

"They came to the village and said, you have to convert to Islam or we will kill you," the girl, identifying herself as Jana, said.

Yazidis, who practice a syncretic religion tied to Zoarastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions, are considered "devil-worshippers" by IS fundamentalists.

Jana told CNN’s Ivan Watson that hundreds of girls were rounded up by IS members and taken to a three-story house in Mosul, Iraq, where they were offered as sex slaves for IS men.

"The guy who chose me was 70 years old and he took me to his house. There were four Yazidi girls there already. They hit us and they didn't give us enough to eat or drink. They told us we were infidels," Jana said.

"He put me in a room and put a gun to my head and I was on the ground and he said I will kill you because you won't convert to Islam. That night, they came and took an 11-year-old girl away and when she came back, she told me they raped her."

Nazand Begikhani, a Kurdish human rights activist and academic, told CNN that the goal of IS’s sexual enslavement is to both recruit young men and humiliate young girls.

"They have two main aims first by youngsters by giving them these young girls and women," Begikhani said. "And secondly, to humiliate and expose these women into slavery and systematic rape." Watson also reported Begikhani told him that "all of those rescued say they were raped."

When asked what she would say to the man who took her to his house, Jana said she had no words.

"I don't want to tell him anything," Jana said. "I just want to kill him."