Armed and dangerous women covered in full Islamic body veils and led by a six-foot-tall Amazon are brutally enforcing strict religious laws and managing brothels with sex slaves in the self-declared capital of the Islamic State.
The Al-Khansa female secret police in Raqqa, Syria carry weapons under their veils and arrest and torture women for the slightest infraction of Sharia Law,
London’s Daily Mail newspaper reported Thursday, as it revealed that at least 60 British women are members of the feared burka brigade.
The newspaper named Aqsa Mahmood, 20, of Glasgow, Scotland, Khadijah Dare, 22, of London and the “terror twins,” Zahra and Salma Halan of Manchester, among the enforcers who have identified themselves as ISIS supporters over social media sites. The Mail said the female force also includes women from the United States, the Netherlands and Russia. They are mostly Western educated and speak little Arabic.
Dare, believed to be a nom de guerre, has appeared in ISIS recruitment videos and is among the top terrorists wanted by Britain’s MI6 secret service. After ISIS beheaded American journalist James Foley in August, Dare sent out a Twitter message saying she hoped to be the first female terrorists to cut off the head of a Western hostage.
“Her notoriety has evolved so rapidly that she has achieved a celebrity-like status among jihadists fighting in Syria and those who are thinking of traveling abroad to join ISIS,” a security source told the Mail.
The leader of the Al-Khansa force is reportedly a six-foot-tall woman named Umm Hamza, who hides a cattle prod, a gun and daggers under her veil.
“She’s not a normal female. She’s huge,” a woman who fled from Al-Khansa
told CNN in October.
Along with imposing Sharia Law on women who might wear the wrong-colored shoes or unapproved burkas, Al-Khansa manages brothels with sex slaves kidnapped from the minority Yazidi sect, which ISIS accuses of devil worship.
Yazidi women between the ages of 40 and 50 are sold for about $40, but female children under nine go for $160.
Al-Khansa takes it name from a 7th century female poet who was a contemporary of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
Female fighters have a long history in Islam, said Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck of the
Carnegie Middle East Center. Some join jihadist groups because the pay is good. Others have religious reasons.
“There are also those who join for ideological reasons,” she wrote. “A large number of these evoke their desire to “glorify the word of God on earth” or to demonstrate “their love for God and the desire of raising the banner of Islam.”
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