It has been revealed that fighters of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have started using the popular social media network Facebook, to sell captive young girls as sex slaves to potential buyers.
The disturbing story was first reported by the Washington Post on May 28. The Post claims the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington nonprofit group that monitors jihadists’ social media accounts made the damning revelation.
The Post showed pictures of young girls about 18 years or below, with a jihadist named Abu Assad Almani posting that he is looking for buyers to buy them.
“To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000,” the May 20 post on Facebook by the ISIS fighter said.
In displaying the images of the girls, Almani advised his Facebook friends to “get married” and “come to dawlah,” or the Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria. He engaged with people who commented on the post in an extensive discussion about whether the $8,000 price tag on the girls was a good value. Some who replied to the postings mocked the girls’ looks, while others scolded Almani for posting photos of girls who weren’t wearing the veil.
“What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?” one person asked. “Nope, supply and demand makes her that price,” Almani replied. The post and the conversation were later taken down by Facebook.
According to MEMRI, the owner of the Facebook account advertising the sale of the girls, Abu Assad Almani is a German national fighting for ISIS in Syria. It is said he has previously posted on Facebook, using the same name. MEMRI said they were able to identify him due to his poor English grammar.
MEMRI also revealed that early postings suggest that Almani is intimately familiar with ISIS’s activities around Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in Syria. He has also used his accounts to solicit donations for the terrorist group in the past.
The Executive Director of MEMRI, Steven Stalinsky was quoted as saying: “We have seen a great deal of brutality, but the content that ISIS has been disseminating over the past two years has surpassed it all for sheer evil. Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this.”
According to reports, ISIS has come under serious pressure in Iraq and Syria. In Syria for example, Russian airstrikes have helped the country’s forces to push ISIS to the periphery of the country. The jihadists are running out of cash, ammunition, food and medicines, forcing them to turn to other ways in order to survive.
This is not the first time ISIS fighters and leaders are using United States-based social media network to carry out their activities. The jihadists have used Twitter and Facebook in the past to make new recruits and spread propaganda messages.
The social media companies have tried to block some of these jihadist accounts and postings whenever they discover them. The online hacktivists group, Anonymous has also in the past taken many of these jihadists accounts offline.
Particularly for Facebook, some observers have said it is swift in taking down accounts linked to ISIS and other jihadists. However, the militants too, have become very sophisticated in their operations on Facebook and other social media platforms. They quickly open new accounts as soon as the older ones are shut down. This has made the complete eradication of the group on Facebook and other platforms very difficult.
Last year, the United States Secretary of States, John Kerry announced that the United States has made it a priority to destroy the cyber capabilities of ISIS. But since the announcement, the public has been kept in the dark as to the measures being put in place to stop the growing threat of the terrorists online.
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