A pair of brave brothers have spoken of the moment they both had
their right hands hacked off by ISIS butchers as punishment for stealing
FLOUR.
Azad and Mohamed Hassan were forced to sit in front of a
baying, blood-thirsty crowd with their arms anaesthetised and strapped
with a tourniquet.
Freed
from Islamic State rule in Mosul by Iraqi forces who are fighting to
recapture the city, the Hassan family bear more scars than most from two
years under the jihadists' self-declared caliphate.
The family
tragedy parallels Mosul's own recent history, from its storming by
Islamic State in 2014, and the imposition of the group's ultra-hardline
rule in its de facto capital, to the Iraqi military campaign to retake
it which has led to ferocious fighting in eastern districts.
A dispute over flour deliveries brought the two brothers before an Islamic State court more than a year ago
Militants had already taken another brother a few months before - a
document given to the family says he was shot suspected of working with
the Iraqi army, but they never saw his body.
A younger brother has joined the Sunni militia brigades, one of the forces fighting in support of the army around Mosul.
On
a small USB stick, Azad, 21, carries a copy of the Islamic State video
made of his and his brother Mohamed's public amputations, hoping someday
for some form of justice.
"As long as I live I won't forget that moment they cut off my brother's hand," Azad said. "Then they tied down my hand.
They had to hit it twice to cut it off. I wanted the ground to open up."
Their
father Hussein lies in a small bed in the family's farm in the village
of Al-Dhibaniyah outside Mosul, his legs seeping blood through bandages
over wounds from an explosion after he returned to their former home in a
recaptured but still fragile area in Mosul.
"They cut the hands of two of my sons, and my third son they took him - Daesh
hurt my family badly," said Hussein, whose wife is Kurdish, using an
Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "We are all Iraqi, all the same
people. I don't know why they did this to us."
When militants overran the city in mid-2014, Azad was helping in the family's small flour delivery business.
" Daesh came to Mosul and turned our lives upside down," he
said.
"At
first they tried to come as if they were revolutionaries. But then they
showed their real face, torturing, cutting off heads, treating people
extremely badly."
The Hassan brothers said they ran foul of Islamic State in May last
year because they were selling flour to a baker who was loyal to the
militants and who didn't pay his debts.
One day the brothers broke into his business to take back flour in lieu of cash.
Azad said they were summoned by Islamic State judges, detained and accused of theft.
An
Iraqi judge known as the "Blood Judge" sentenced them to be beheaded
and crucified, but a Saudi judge changed the sentence to amputation.
Later, they were taken to a public square where Islamic State had gathered hundreds to watch since early morning.
A doctor administered anaesthetic to their wrists.
In the Islamic State video, a militant fighter was the first to be
punished, screaming "God is Great" after his hand was hacked off by a
masked jihadist who smashed a cleaver's blunt edge down onto another
blade set against the man's wrist.
Then it was the turn of 25-year-old Mohamed, and finally Azad's hand was amputated after his right arm was strapped to a table.
Another militant wrapped the bloody stump in bandages.
"They are not human, they are against all humanity," Mohamed said. "I wanted to die when I saw them cutting my brother."
Now
both the married men, who are unemployed and supported by their family,
are looking to aid agencies for help with artificial limbs. Neither has
much hope.
Their younger brother Niad, 20, has taken another
route, joining a local government-sponsored Sunni militia taking part in
the Mosul campaign.
On his right forearm, Niad tattooed the face of a woman with hair flowing free, an image he says was to defy Islamic State.
" Daesh would never let us do that so that's why I did it," he said. "It was to say no to Daesh."
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