The Islamic State is circulating a slave price list for women and children, with the youngest children fetching the highest price, according to Zainab Bangura, a senior United Nations official.
On the sex slave price list, girls and boys aged 1 to 9 cost $165. Prices for adolescent girls are $124, with the price dropping as women age and falling to as little as $41 for women 40 and over.
When the list first surfaced eight months ago, people questioned its authenticity, but Bangura said the sex menu choices represent real purchases. Bangura, a U.N. special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, said she was given a copy of list inside an Islamic State pamphlet in April during a visit to Iraq.
“The girls get peddled like barrels of petrol,” she said last week in New York. “One girl can be sold and bought by five or six different men. Sometimes these fighters sell the girls back to their families for thousands of dollars of ransom.”
Militant leaders are given priority to buy their first pick among the captured women and children, and then jihadi fighters. The market is then opened up to rich foreigners, and bidding may rise to thousands of dollars, according to Bangura. The remaining women and children are offered for sale according to the listed menu prices.
An Islamic State pamphlet obtained by the Middle East Media Research Institute contains a question-and-answer on captured female slaves that includes questions like:
“Question 5: Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female captive immediately after taking possession [of her]?
“If she is a virgin, he [her master] can have intercourse with her immediately after taking possession of her. However, is she isn’t, her uterus must be purified [first]. …”
“Question 6: Is it permissible to sell a female captive?
“It is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can be disposed of [as long as that doesn’t cause [the Muslim ummah] any harm or damage.”
“Question 13: Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female slave who has not reached puberty?
“It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse; however if she is not fit for intercourse, then it is enough to enjoy her without intercourse.”
The Islamic State reportedly borrowed the idea of selling sex slaves from Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group in northeastern Nigeria infamous for kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls. Boko Haram has since pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Savagery and sophistication go hand in glove in most of the Islamic State’s operations, including this one. “They have a machinery; they have a program,” said Bangura. “They have a manual on how you treat these women. They have a marriage bureau which organizes all of these ‘marriages’ and the sale of women. They have a price list.”
The Islamic State is “not an ordinary rebel group” because it is a “combination of a conventional military and a well-run organized state,” said Bangura, who warned listeners against dismissing the group, which draws thousands of fighters from the West to its 80,000 square mile Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
