A Yazidi woman who says she was enslaved and abused as a child by an Australian woman linked to the ISIS terrorist group has called on the Australian government to bring her alleged abuser to justice and allow her to testify in court. The woman, identified only as Aisha to protect her identity, gave an exclusive account of the five months of torture she endured as a nine-year-old in the Syrian ISIS caliphate, under the control of a woman believed to be Hodan Abby, a Somali-Australian who assumed the nom de guerre Umm Osama.
Aisha described being trafficked multiple times after being kidnapped from her home in Sinjar, Iraq, in late 2014, during ISIS’s campaign against the Yazidi community. She said her time in Abby’s household was particularly brutal, noting that it was there she first suffered sexual violence at the hands of Abby’s husband, known to Aisha as Abu Osama. Abu Osama, believed to be a German ISIS fighter who was reportedly killed in a Syrian airstrike, purchased Aisha in an ISIS slave market in Raqqa, then capital of the caliphate. She was initially confined to a bathroom and then repeatedly raped. Abby, who Aisha said was aware of the abuse, physically beat her and subjected her to harsh treatment.
According to Aisha, after Abby’s daughter was born in 2016, Abby persuaded her husband to sell Aisha to another ISIS fighter, Abu Yahya, an Albanian currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Kosovo for enslavement and sexual abuse of Yazidi women.
Australian investigators and analysts specializing in ISIS foreign fighters have linked Abby to the pseudonym Umm Osama and confirmed her presence in Syria from 2015. Abby traveled from Sydney to join the ISIS caliphate at age 18 and was later detained in Kurdish-run camps in northern Syria, where she is alleged to have enforced strict religious rules on other detainees.
A former United Nations human rights investigator working with Aisha, alongside academic Rodger Shanahan from the Australian National University’s National Security College, both affirmed the identification of Hodan Abby as the woman known as Umm Osama by survivors. Shanahan highlighted that Abby was the only known Australian female ISIS member matching the description and pseudonym used by Aisha.
Currently detained in a Syrian facility in Idlib alongside Abby, Aisha has a limited window to return to Australia, as her single-entry passport is set to expire later this year. She has urged the federal government for assistance to ensure her return and to allow her participation in Abby’s forthcoming trial. Abby and her family in Sydney have reportedly requested humanitarian assistance for Abby’s disabled daughter to receive urgent surgery for shrapnel wounds sustained in Syria, with some recent medical interventions having taken place.
Aisha, now 20, detailed the physical and psychological torment she endured, including habitual beatings, being locked in a bathroom, and forced labor starting at 4 a.m. abusive punishments such as having hot objects pressed against her skin. Despite Abby’s frequent anger and violence, she was also reported to attempt escapes from ISIS-controlled territories.
In reflecting on her ordeal, Aisha questioned how Abby, herself a mother, could have treated her as she did. She emphasized her desire for accountability and justice for the abuses she suffered while under Abby’s control. Authorities in Australia have yet to comment publicly on the case.