Chapter Nine: Prisoners, Part One

title: Chapter Nine: Prisoners, Part One
author: Caliphate
contenttype: podcast
publication: Caliphate
published: 2018-06-14T15:45:00-04:00
sourceurl: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pfx.vpixl.com/6qj4J/nyt.simplecastaudio.com/4bcf9c0c-53cf-4055-9873-1c15d39d0d33/episodes/7337a241-f9d4-408d-8464-d218e9d23f58/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=4bcf9c0c-53cf-4055-9873-1c15d39d0d33&awEpisodeId=7337a241-f9d4-408d-8464-d218e9d23f58&feed=uUplVtAS

word_count: 4085

The early chapters of this series focus on a man we refer to as Abu Husaifa al-Khanadi, who claimed to be a member of ISIS and said he had committed multiple murders while in the Islamic State. In several episodes of the series, we documented his story, as well as our efforts to verify aspects of it. In September of 2020, two and a half years after this podcast was released, the Canadian police arrested Husaifa, whose real name is Shairo's Choundry, and charged him with perpetrating a hoax. That charge led the times to conduct its own investigation, which found a history of misrepresentations by Choundry, and no corroboration that he committed the atrocities he described in the Caliphate podcast. As a result, the times has concluded that the episodes of Caliphate that presented Choundry's claims did not meet our standards for accuracy. In this feed, we've published a conversation with the executive editor of the Times, Dean Bakeh, where he discusses the original reporting in Caliphate, and what the times has found in its re-examination of the story. It's July 22nd, and we're heading to a police station in Western Mosul, and this is apparently the place where police officers and members of the Iraqi Security Force are bringing ISIS members who were captured during the battle for Western Mosul. So we're hoping to interview some of the detainees. We're here. Chapter 9, Prisoners. So this is the police station. Let's start at the jail. Okay. So we drive up to a building. They appear to have taken over a state-led building in Western Mosul. Most likely, a municipal building belonging to the Iraqi government. Perhaps it was the state-led home of a wealthy person. The details of barbed wire on the outside, it was half the cart, and sandbags all around the building on the balcony. Yep. It's only me, you, and Andy are going in. No security details, because we're not being touched. You, me and Hawk, walk in. Yeah, we are currently in a Iraqi prison where rooms are full of different ISIS members. And can I just say I'm basically breathing through my mouth right now? The first thing that hit me was the smell. The smell of sweat, the smell of dirt. And we began passing these metal doors with big latches on them. There was like a great window in some of the doors. And I remember when we passed one, you could see these faces peering out at you. We're taking upstairs. And the security officials who run this prison took us into one of their commanders' offices. And this is the main facility where ISIS prisoners are transferred. There's a desk, there's a couple of chairs, the Iraqi flag. How many prisoners do they have here who are confirmed ISIS members? I explain our goal to the commander who is sitting before us. Wow, who are you? So we have 700 detainees. I never know who they're actually going to bring out to see me. Some of them were reported by the families or by sources. Some of them have their names matches, like the same name as the inded database saying that this is ISIS member. But I make clear that I only want to see confirmed members of ISIS. 200 of them willingly confessed that they've joined ISIS already. And I do that because according to Iraq's Canteritas and Law from 2005, there are only two outcomes for confirmed members of terrorist groups like ISIS, life sentence or capital punishment unless a judge sees fit to intervene. The reality is that once you're taken into a prison, like the one that we were in, your chances of coming out are close to no. Now, I want to recognize right away, there are definitely people out there that would say that we have no business being here, that the very action of us coming into a prison and speaking to a prisoner could compromise that person's fate. Obviously, this is very far from the ideal situation. I get that. But if a niceist member, even in this complex and convoluted situation, agrees to speak to me, I want to hear what they have to say. I think that there is value in listening to that. After some time, they brought in a young man. Why are they tying his wrist? They don't feel comfortable with him. His hands were bound. Do you think that's necessary, Huck? Okay. Yes. Okay. He looked to be, I would say, in his 30s, probably his early 30s. He had dark, curly hair. They can't put them in the seat in the caution because there is 30 clothes in him. He had rashes on his arms. And they did not want to let him sit down because they thought he might have scabies. I basically took my hijab, which I had brought on this trip to cover myself and to try to blend in. Now, as the commander, could we put my hijab down on the couch and he can then sit on that? Salamu alaikum. Afia, Amriqia, men, New York times. And eventually, they agreed to that. Just tell him, I'm a journalist. I have... Please, can we close the door? Can we close the door? Yeah. Please explain to him, Huck. I'm a journalist. I have... we are independent of our government. And I would like his permission to interview him and let him know that he is free not to speak to me. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of the government or the government or the government. I'm afraid of the government. New York Times. You said that you're free to say something. This is your Muslim welcome and God may Allah may salute you. It is his name and where he's from. It's Makhwin, M. Tumnih. So this prisoner, his name is Bashar. We're just going to use his first name. And he's from where? In the back of the ginger. From the back of the ginger, Western Western. He explains to us that he's from Western Mazor. So he said I was working in my shop and they used to come to my shop and fix their generators. He says that he was a mechanic. He had a shop where he dealt with a number of electrical appliances, specifically generators. And ISIS began coming to him. To get their own generators fixed. ISIS uses generators for numerous things. They were using portable generators to build tunnels, to power up the tools that they were using to dig. They used them to power up their homes and their offices. He then describes how at a certain point the work was stopped. They just stopped coming to him. So they said the only solution for you if you want to get paid is to join us and pledge allegiance to us. When he asked why they said to him, we'll come back to you if you pledge allegiance. And that's what drove me to pledge allegiance to them so that I can get paid. So he claims that he pledged allegiance, that he wasn't even aware of their ideology. I was doing nothing. I was just going from home to work and from work to home. That he was never a soldier. He never took part in any violence. He was just a mere mechanic. So he says I just joined and to be just like the other people who joined already. And it's then that we start talking about the money. What was the salary? You're a centist. A centipede. A centipede or a centipede or a shoyah? A hundred thousand and something. Three hundred thousand is the salary of an amir. It's not the salary of a low level ISIS guy. We ask him how much he was paid by ISIS and he surprises us by saying three hundred thousand Iraqi deniers. So that's around two hundred and fifty bucks a month. What explains his high salary? We actually know exactly how ISIS pays its fighters because of the work of researchers like Iman Temimi who have found these salaries. The payment is according to the family and children that you have. We know that it's a stipend system based on how many dependents you have. A full $5.25. So an unmarried fighter who has no children starts out at a base pay of around fifty bucks. We know that they pay extra for each wife that you have. They pay extra for the number of children that you have that are under the age of 15. He had four. So he's still a hundred thousand of what has on calculation. So as I was pushing him on the numbers. I don't remember exactly how they were paying. He then claims that he was in fact with ISIS for just a few months and they asked him to do something that he was uncomfortable with. When they did so he said I don't want to work with you anymore so he quits. And he quits without any repercussions. And this is total bullshit. Just tell him, but if he doesn't want to talk to me that's fine but I don't want to waste the last two days we have here during interviews with somebody who's lying to me. And at this point you and Hock you were on to him. I mean at that point I was almost done because the one thing I know is you don't just join ISIS. It's not like some sort of YMCA that you join and then decide that you want to quit the next month. And then I had a terrible thought that could explain the discrepancy in his figures. Did they also give a supplement if you had a sub-eyeup? If you had a sub-eyeup. I realized in that moment that he might have had a sub-eyeup. He is that he has in his own care. And the sub-eyeup. They just took on. Zabiyah is the term that ISIS uses to refer to their female sex slaves. How old was she? You don't know her. She's 15 years. And she was 15 when he took her. I mean she was captured when she was 12. Yes. And tens of thousands fled the weekend soaked on Sinja and are now surrounded. So back in 2014. Desperation on a mountain refuge. Not long after the date of the city of Mosul. People graced for aid from an helicopter. ISIS turned its attention to the north to a place called Mount Sinja. And it was there that they attacked a religious minority called the Yastis. We're learning more about the stranded members of a religious minority. Some horrific stories are emerging. You might remember the really heartbreaking images that came out around this time of the helicopters landing on top of the mountain. In a dramatic rescue mission, the helicopter touched down for five very precious but awful minutes. And of people just rushing it in an effort to escape ISIS. That invasion was widely reported as just another territorial conquest, as ISIS trying to get more land. But in fact, based on the dozens of interviews that I've done with the survivors and based on the documents that ISIS released, it's clear that this was a sexual conquest. They were going there specifically to get the women and the girls. So could you just explain how it is that slavery factors into ISIS's vision for the world? So the thing to always keep in mind is ISIS is trying to recreate a specific time in history. They're trying to take us back to the seventh century and specifically to the time when the Prophet Muhammad and his companions roamed the earth, which in their minds was the most virtuous period in our history. And of course, that was a time once slavery existed. It was common, not just in the Muslim world, but in much of the world. And that is reflected in Islamic scripture. Slavery exists and is mentioned as a lawful institution in the Quran. And in the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence, this is the body of laws that was written down after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, where it is codified. Now, what ISIS is doing is they are telling the world because it appears in scripture, it is our duty to uphold it. We as Muslims have to take the whole Shabang. Every aspect of it, and their beef with the Muslim world is that they are applying only some of the rules and the ones that no longer strive with modernity are being ignored. Like slavery. Right? So that's the framework. Okay. Okay. Then within this framework, they have mined this body of Islamic laws to lay out the steps through which a person isn't enslaved. A woman isn't enslaved. And they do this in their magazine, Debeek. They do it in pamphlets that their religious scholars put out. This was like something they made for their followers. Like here's how to... It's literally a how-to. It's a Q&A with their religious scholars on who you can enslave, how you do it. And they've plotted it out, starting with the question of what type of women can you take as slaves? And what ISIS does is they point to stories from the life of the Prophet Muhammad and of his companions. Stories of battle when they invaded areas that were non-Muslim and they took everything that they found there, both the property and the people as war spirals. So the key is a battle in a time of war and the victims have to be non-Muslims. That brings us to the Asidis. There are about half a million Yazidis, most of them in Iraq. The Asidis believe in seven sacred angels. They follow an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism. So in ISIS's view they are Mushraken. This is the Arabic word for polyethiest. So the fact that they practice a non-Muslim faith and the fact that ISIS invaded their land in a time of war meant that in the view of the terrorist group, they were fully eligible for enslavement. But they go one step further. They describe the act of raping these girls as essentially a holy act. And this isn't just something that I think they say. It's not just propaganda, it's not just written down. I know now from the numerous interviews I've done with the women and girls who survived that the fighters who took them literally prayed before they got on top of them and raped them. They were treating the rape as a kind of sacrament. Okay. What happened to her? Where's she now? What's her official? Salam al-Falehalla. I turned her into this Qudji forces. So back in the prison, we're sitting with Bashar. I did it just to get her out to her family. I didn't do any of the atrocities. That's why I did it. I just bought her a place to give her to her family. He then makes this incredible claim. I felt really bad because these daughters belong to families. They shouldn't have been dealt like this. He says that he basically bought a 15-year-old girl for the price of $5,000. This is more than a year's worth of his salary. And he says that he bought her for the sake of essentially saving her. I asked him, did you rape her? He says, no, I swear to God, I didn't rape her. He swore up and down that he had never touched her. I thought her that I don't think like these guys. And he said that in fact, he made an arrangement with her family. And her family told him that if you don't touch her, you are going to rescue her. When he had gotten in touch with the girl's father, the father was so relieved and so grateful for what he had done that he in fact offered to help him flee the city. And he could tell, I think, that I was skeptical. And so what he did is he threw it back in my camp. And he said, go find this girl. I'll tell him, she'll react to that. The girl I'm sure is going to back up everything I said. How much do I have? That's what I want. I want you pleased to tell her family. And so I thought, okay, I'll do that. Yeah, call Falaq until he's in the first place. Hi, Falaq. It's Rukmini. Sorry to bother you. How are you? Good. Good. Falaq, we are at the police station here. And we just interviewed an ISIS guy who had a Yazidi girl. And I was... So I just wanted to ask for his permission once again to interview him if that's okay. So less than 24 hours later, we were back at the prison. Just to confirm because I'm also doing a recording. He has said it's okay to interview him. Yeah, good old sense. And he explained to us that he went to great lengths to save a Yazidi girl. That he bought her for $5,000. And that his aim in buying her was to essentially free her and to give her back to her family. I didn't believe that story. And he challenged me and said to try to get a hold of this young woman. The thing Bashar didn't know as he was sitting across from me is I have deep contacts in the Yazidi community. So we've gotten a hold of the young woman. She's 15 years old. Actually, she's a girl. And we're going to call her now. We're going to call her now. We're going to talk about this in a bit. We're going to do this for $5,000. That's her. Hey, Fala. Fala, hi. Hi, Fala. It's Rick Mini. I have you on speaker phone. And the ISIS prisoner whose name is Bashar is sitting next to me. And we'd like please to put on the phone. Okay. Assalamu alaikum. Marhaba. Anasahafia, Amriqia. It's me, Ruk Mini. Alikum, Anasahafia. Thank you. So on the other end of the phone was the young Yazidi girl. We're withholding her name at her request. She was talking to us with the permission of her father, who was at her side. And translating for us was a Yazidi community leader named Fala. And right away. She says it's not one month. It was five months. It was five months. Okay. The girl identified this man as the person who had bought her. She confirmed his line of work. She confirmed what he looked like. She even confirmed his voice. She does recognize his voice when he was being... She went on to tell us that he was in fact the third man that had bought her. I'm sorry to ask a sensitive question, but can you please tell me and tell this man if he abused you sexually, if he raped you in these five months that he held you? Okay. She said yes. But the question is, is this person who was in the first place? Is he the fifth person who was in her service? Yes. She's the first one. Now. Who was the first one? So what's the reaction? She says yes. I swear to God. All of them have taken my virtue and my honor. And I asked her, he himself. Did he do something? She said yes, she did. And I swear to Allah, he did every today. He would come to me and you would have sex with me. She said that Bashar was cruel to her. She said he used to beat me and he used to ask my father for ransom, that he used to either to give him 10,000 Yossas or he's going to sell her to Syria. She also said that he did indeed contact her father. He had said that he had done as much, but it wasn't to help her to rescue her. He was contacting her father to shake him down for a ransom. Did he pray before raping her? Yes. Hello, God for the good. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Please tell her, I'm so sorry for what she's experienced and tell her my own mother was raped and she should not feel in any way ashamed by what has happened to her. It was not her fault. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. I'll be in touch. Okay? Bye. Yeah. Bashar. Bashar. Now I'd like to ask him what he says. He challenged me yesterday and said to get this girl on the phone that she would basically recount what he said. She's saying exactly the opposite. What is his reaction? I said to the bar, I said to the priest, if you want to go to the building, I'll tell you another word about his word. I'll tell you something. You'll tell me. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. This is not true. I'll tell you. Bashar swore on the name of God that everything he had done had been for this young girl's good. He had done this to save her. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I'll tell you something. I'll tell you. And he stuck to the story even as pretty much every other part of his story started to fall apart. Now he says I'm from Faroq, not from Luxinger. I'm not from Faroq, never. The place that he had joined ISIS changed. Next to the Grand Nuri Mosque, now he says. He admitted that he had held her for five months, not one. Yes, he said he was only one month. The amount of time that he had been in ISIS started to expand. He's meeting her on some of the details. Yes. He says what I'm telling you is all the truth. And that's nothing but the truth. And I'm not contradicting and I'm not lying to you. And that's what I have. So Bashar, I'm just a journalist. Okay? I'm not a member of any security force and I'm not a member of any government. I'm asking you, do you want to tell me what really happened with this girl? Or do you not want to be interviewed at all? And after some time, he just stopped answering my questions. And at that point, I knew that it was time for us to go. So, do you know what happened to Bashar? So the jail where we saw him told us that they transferred him to Baghdad. But when we called Baghdad, they have no record of him. So I don't actually know what happened to him. What we do know for sure is that the Iraqi government is aggressively prosecuting these people and they're holding trials that are incredibly hasty. And human rights groups have criticized that type of justice saying that these hasty trials are first of all violating the due process of the prisoners. And there's worries that perhaps people who are not ISIS members are being implicated. But beyond that, they're also saying that this is a violation of the rights of the victims. Because they are not being given a chance at closure. They're not being given a chance to know, to even know what happened to their tormentors. And in fact, since that phone call that we made in that jail, we've been able to get back in touch with the young girl's father. And he told us that the fact that his daughter was able to confront her rapist in that way was cathartic for her. But the fact is, this young girl wouldn't have even known that he was in jail. If it weren't for this accident of journalism, if it weren't for the fact that a group of New York Times journalists just happened to walk into this prison on this particular day. So it's possible that she would have thought that he could have just been out roaming the world, living in the world snow. Right. What these men did live on in the hearts of the women and girls they left behind.