The house was under surveillance for several days. There were seven women inside, all captives of Islamic State (Isis), human bounty picked up during their rampage through Christian areas of northern Iraq last summer.
The captors were Australian-born. The reconnaissance team was part of a network of freelance rescuers built up by a Yazidi Iraqi know as Abu Shujaa, whose name translates as “father of the brave”. So far the Isis assault on Yazidi men, women and children had been all one way, but now he intended to strike back.
When the Australians left the house in the evening, he gave the go-ahead.
“Two of our men went inside the house and three others stood guard around the area, monitoring the situation,” said Abu Shujaa, who oversaw the meticulously-planned operation from a house in the nearby city of Raqaa. “We quickly took the women to a safe house in Raqqa province and kept them there overnight. Next day, we got them to Gaziantep in Turkey.”
On his own way out of Raqqa, he had a nasty surprise – an Isis checkpoint. “I was lucky they did not ask any questions,” he said.
Abu Shujaa has become something of a legend among his Yazidi community. He runs an underground network across Syria to free Yazidis kidnapped by Isis. The group is believed to have taken hundreds of women and children hostage during a bloody assault on the Sinjar area of western Iraq last August.
The jihadis have kept the women as concubines or sex slaves. Boys are indoctrinated and those able to carry guns are trained to fight.
Abu Shujaa used to be a local merchant in Sinjar before the Isis assault, occasionally crossing the border into Syria on business. He is not willing to discuss the line of work he was in, but says it was instrumental in developing the network of people he currently manages.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/13/father-of-the-brave-the-yazidi-christian-who-rescues-hostages-from-isisGood man.
