Nadia Murad - The Last Girl

N adia Murad is not just my client, she is my friend. When we were introduced in London, she asked if I would act as her lawyer. She explained that she would not be able to provide funds, that the case would likely be long and unsuccessful. But before you decide, she had said, hear my story.

In 2014, ISIS attacked Nadias village in Iraq, and her life as a twenty-one-year-old student was shattered. She was forced to watch her mother and brothers be marched off to their deaths. And Nadia herself was traded from one ISIS fighter to another. She was forced to pray, forced to dress up and put makeup on in preparation for rape, and one night was brutally abused by a group of men until she was unconscious. She showed me her scars from cigarette burns and beatings. And she told me that throughout her ordeal ISIS militants would call her a dirty unbeliever and brag about conquering Yazidi women and wiping their religion from the earth.

Nadia was one of thousands of Yazidis taken by ISIS to be sold in markets and on Facebook, sometimes for as little as twenty dollars. Nadias mother was one of eighty older women who were executed and buried in an unmarked grave. Six of her brothers were among the hundreds of men who were murdered in a single day.

What Nadia was telling me about is genocide. And genocide doesnt happen by accident. You have to plan it. Before the genocide began, the ISIS Research and Fatwa Department studied the Yazidis and concluded that, as a Kurdish-speaking group that did not have a holy book, Yazidis were nonbelievers whose enslavement was a firmly established aspect of the Shariah. This is why, according to ISISs warped morality, Yazidisunlike Christians, Shias, and otherscan be systematically raped. Indeed, this was to be one of the most effective ways to destroy them.

What followed was the establishment of a bureaucracy of evil on an industrial scale. ISIS even released a pamphlet entitled Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves to provide more guidelines. Question: Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female slave who has not reached puberty? Answer: It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasnt reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse. Question: Is it permissible to sell a female captive? Answer: It is permissible to buy, sell, or gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property.

When Nadia told me her story in London, it had been almost two years since ISISs genocide against the Yazidis had begun. Thousands of Yazidi women and children were still held captive by ISIS, but no member of ISIS had been prosecuted in a court anywhere in the world for these crimes. Evidence was being lost or destroyed. And prospects for justice looked bleak.

Of course, I took the case. And Nadia and I spent more than a year campaigning together for justice. We met repeatedly with the Iraqi government, United Nations representatives, members of the UN Security Council, and ISIS victims. I prepared reports, provided drafts and legal analysis, and gave speeches imploring the UN to act. Most of our interlocutors told us it would be impossible: the Security Council had not taken action on international justice in years.

But just as I write this foreword, the UN Security Council has adopted a landmark resolution creating an investigation team that will collect evidence of the crimes committed by ISIS in Iraq. This is a major victory for Nadia and all the victims of ISIS, because it means that evidence will be preserved and that individual ISIS members can be put on trial. I sat next to Nadia in the Security Council when the resolution was adopted unanimously. And as we watched fifteen hands go up, Nadia and I looked at each other and smiled.

As a human-rights lawyer, my job is often to be the voice of those who have been silenced: the journalist behind bars or the victims of war crimes fighting for their day in court. There is no doubt ISIS tried to silence Nadia when they kidnapped and enslaved her, raped and tortured her, and killed seven members of her family in a single day.

But Nadia refused to be silenced. She has defied all the labels that life has given her: Orphan. Rape victim. Slave. Refugee. She has instead created new ones: Survivor. Yazidi leader. Womens advocate. Nobel Peace Prize nominee. United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. And now author.

Over the time I have known her, Nadia has not only found her voice, she has become the voice of every Yazidi who is a victim of genocide, every woman who has been abused, every refugee who has been left behind.

Those who thought that by their cruelty they could silence her were wrong. Nadia Murads spirit is not broken, and her voice will not be muted. Instead, through this book, her voice is louder than ever.

A MAL C LOONEY

Barrister

September 2017