Scarred Yazidi boys escape Islamic State combat training
When nine-year-old Murad got the chance to flee from Islamic State - the group that repeatedly raped his mother and slaughtered or enslaved thousands from his Yazidi minority - he hesitated. So powerful was the indoctrination during his 20-month captivity in Iraq and Syria that the boy told his mother he wanted to stay at […]Stephen Kalin writes for Reuters:
When nine-year-old Murad got the chance to flee from Islamic State - the group that repeatedly raped his mother and slaughtered or enslaved thousands from his Yazidi minority - he hesitated.
So powerful was the indoctrination during his 20-month captivity in Iraq and Syria that the boy told his mother he wanted to stay at the camp where Islamic State had trained him to kill "infidels", including his own people.
Now in the relative safety of Kurdish-controlled territory, Murad's mother told Reuters how she had struggled to persuade her son - like other Yazidi boys being prepared for battle - to escape earlier this month with her and his little brother.
"My son's brain was changed and most of the kids were saying to their families 'Go, we will stay'," she said, declining to give her name. "Until the last moment before we left, my son was saying 'I will not come with you'."
