Yazidi woman testifies about IS leader’s treatment of US hostage Kayla Mueller

Yazidi woman testifies about IS leader’s treatment of US hostage Kayla Mueller

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Alexandria (United States) (AFP) – A younger Yazidi girl testified on Monday that American support worker Kayla Mueller informed her she was raped by former Islamic Condition chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and threatened with demise if she tried out to escape.

Lia Mulla, who was captured by Islamic State (IS) users in August 2014 as she experimented with to flee Iraq’s Mount Sinjar with her household, testified by way of a translator on Monday at the trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, who was allegedly a single of Mueller’s IS jailers.

Elsheikh, a 33-calendar year-previous former British national, is accused of getting a member of the infamous IS kidnap-and-murder mobile recognised as the “Beatles.”

He is charged with the murders of 4 Us residents: Mueller, freelance journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig, one more aid employee.

Mueller, an assist employee from Arizona, was captured by IS in August 2013 while accompanying her Syrian boyfriend on a vacation to a medical center in Aleppo, where by he was contracted to restore a satellite dish.

She was initially held by the “Beatles” but then was allegedly turned more than to Baghdadi, the IS chief who died throughout a US exclusive forces raid in 2019.

Mulla said she was taken by IS to various destinations with other young women of all ages right after being captured.

At some point, she ended up in a prison where by Mueller was being detained.

They communicated “typically with their fingers,” she reported, and a couple words of Arabic.

“One day they took her and when they introduced her again she was actually afraid,” Mulla said. “They experienced instructed her that IS preferred to marry us off, and if we had been to consider to run away they would get rid of us.”

A few of times afterwards, Mulla said she was taken alongside with Mueller and yet another Yazidi female to the residence of Abu Sayyaf, a top Baghdadi lieutenant, where by they would “address us like slaves.”

‘Dirty house’

Following a 7 days there, she mentioned they ended up taken to the “soiled home… the put have been they took young women and raped them.”

She explained Baghdadi came a person night time and took Mueller away.

When Mueller returned the following morning, “she was extremely unhappy, she was extremely nervous, she was crying,” Mulla stated. “She had been raped and threatened that if she tried out to run absent he would destroy her.”

Mulla claimed she resolved to consider to escape and requested Mueller to be part of her but she declined. “She was frightened that if she was captured, she would be beheaded,” she said.

But Mueller requested Mulla to “convey to the globe” about her if she managed to make it to independence.

Mulla reported she slipped out a window, climbed on a generator to get above a wall and ran for a extensive time.

After her escape, she explained her brother put her in touch with a good friend who was a translator for the People and she advised them about Mueller.

IS declared Mueller’s demise in February 2015 and reported she was killed in a Jordanian airstrike, a claim that was disputed by US authorities.

Foley, Sotloff and Kassig were being murdered by IS and video clips of their fatalities launched by the team for propaganda functions.

Elsheikh and an additional “Beatle,” Alexanda Amon Kotey, ended up captured in January 2018 by a Kurdish militia in Syria and turned around to US forces in Iraq.

They have been flown to Virginia in 2020 to confront prices of hostage-having, conspiracy to murder US citizens and supporting a terrorist corporation.

Kotey pleaded guilty in September 2021 and is going through daily life in prison.

“Beatles” executioner Mohamed Emwazi was killed by a US drone in Syria in 2015.

Prosecutors are anticipated to wrap up their case from Elsheikh on Tuesday.

Elsheikh has denied the costs and his legal professionals claim his arrest is a case of mistaken id.