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Advocacy group Human Rights Watch on Tuesday said that Islamic State (IS) extremists had tortured teenagers from Syrian town of Kobane for six months in captivity.
According to the rights group, 153 school-going children were kidnapped by the IS in May while they were returning to Kobane after sitting for exams in Aleppo; it released 25 of the hostages late in October.
Four of them where interviewed in Turkey, where they had been given refuge, by HRW; the boys recounted regular thrashing with hoses and cables, and being forced to watch footage of IS militants beheading captives. The children, between the ages of 14 and 16, were also forced to pray five times every day, and were beaten up if they did poorly in mandatory religious lessons or if they tried to escape.
“Those who didn’t conform to the programme were beaten. They beat us with a green hose or a thick cable with wire running through it. They also beat the soles of our feet. They made us learn verses of the Koran and beat those who didn’t manage to learn them. When some boys tried to escape, the treatment got worse and we were all punished and given less food”, one of the boys was quoted saying.
The IS has captured large parts of Iraq and Syria, and has declared a “caliphate” and committed numerous atrocities, including mass executions, torture, slavery and beheadings. It has also besieged the predominantly Kurdish town Kobane, located just a few kilometers from the Turkish border, kindling a mass exodus of around 200,000 people to Turkey.
One of the boys speaking to HRW said that those who hailed from families with close ties to Kurdish fighters were separated by the captors, who were from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan and Syria.
“They told them to give them the addresses of their families, cousins, uncles, saying ‘When we go to Kobane we will get them and cut them up’”, the boy said.
