Ron is committed to pushing for a strategy to destroy ISIS and, today, held a hearing on ISIS’s ideology. His committee heard from a former ISIS slave who warned the United States about how attacks like Orlando and San Bernardino will continue until the terror group is confronted.
A former ISIS slave is issuing a warning to the West if direct action is not taken in the wake of increasing terrorist attacks.
Ahead of testimonies Tuesday to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, committee chairman Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson told the witnesses:
“Don’t hold back. Lay out the reality.”
The four witnesses did just that, detailing the series of horrors they have chronicled during ISIS’ brutal reign in Iraq and Syria.
Among the witnesses were Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, the Spectra Project’s Subhi Nahas, and Tarek Elgawhary, the director of Religious Studies Programs at the World Organization for Resource Development and Education.
But the among the most powerful was the testimony from Nadia Murad Basee Taho, a 21-year-old Yazidi and former ISIS slave.
In translated remarks, she told the Senators of how her community was destroyed by ISIS. Remaining peaceful was to the Yazidis’ detriment, Murad said:
“My community of about half million people never harmed anyone. We lived in peace with Muslims, Christians and other groups, religious or not. But our peaceful ways did not save us.”
Given the option of “convert or die,” Murad said the men in her community were executed, while the women and children were made slaves.
Murad said the terrorist attacks like the ones seen in Orlando and San Bernardino will only increase, adding:
“Orlando will be repeated if the world doesn’t put an end such terrorism. There is no sanctuary. With today’s weapons and bioterror, no place is safe for anyone. Daesh is powerful. And it has been helped.”
After nearly breaking down into tears, Murad referred to ISIS’ genocide as a “Holocaust anew,” before pleading with the lawmakers to take action against the radical terrorist army, or risk neglecting an increasingly powerful enemy.
“Do not let them grow more and more by indifference,” she said. “Any form of ambivalence will be felt as encouragement.”