A young Yazidi woman testified in court in the United States that American aid worker Kayla Mueller told her that she was raped by the former leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and threatened with death if she tried to escape.
Young woman Leah Mulla, who was detained by the terrorist organization in August 2014 while trying to escape from Mount Sinjar in Iraq with her family, testified through an interpreter on Monday in the trial of Al-Shafei Al-Sheikh, who is believed to be one of Mueller’s jailers.
Several European journalists and former hostages in Syria have testified in the past few days as part of the trial of al-Shafei al-Sheikh, a member of the ISIS cell known as “The Beatles” because of its British accent.
The sheikh is accused of killing four Americans: Mueller, freelance journalists James Foley and Stephen Sotloff, and another aid worker, Peter Kassig.
The extremist organization detained Mueller, an aid worker from Arizona, in August 2013 while she was accompanying her Syrian boyfriend on a visit to a hospital in Aleppo, where he was called to repair a satellite dish.
From “The Beatles” to Al-Baghdadi
Initially held by the “Beatles” cell, she was later believed to have been handed over to al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader who was killed in a US special forces operation in 2019.
In her testimony, Mulla said that she was transferred to several ISIS sites, along with other young women who were kidnapped, and ended up in the prison where Kayla Mueller was being held.
She explained that they communicated by “mostly hand gestures” and some words in Arabic.
The court stated that “one day they took Mueller, and when they brought her back, she was very afraid,” explaining: “They told her that ISIS wants to marry us, and if we try to escape, they will kill us.”
Two days later, she was taken with Mueller and another young Yazidi woman to the home of Abu Sayyaf, a senior leader in the organization, where they “treated us like slaves,” according to Mulla.
After a week there, she said, they were taken to the “dirty house…the place where they take young women and rape them.”
Al-Baghdadi came one night and took Mueller with him, Mulla said.
Two members of the ISIS cell of the Beatles, Sheikh and Koti
Rape and death threats
She added that when Mueller returned the next morning, “she was very sad, very nervous and was crying,” adding, “She was raped and threatened that if she tried to escape, he would kill her.”
Mulla decided to try to escape and asked Mueller to join her, but she refused. “She was afraid that if she was caught, she would be beheaded,” she said. However, Mueller asked Mulla to “tell the world” her story if she managed to escape.
Mulla said she slipped out of a window, climbed onto a generator, climbed a wall, and then ran for a long time.
After she escaped, her brother helped her contact a friend who was a translator for the Americans, and she gave them information regarding Mueller.
Mueller dies in an air strike
ISIS announced Mueller’s death in February 2015, and said she had died in a Jordanian air strike, which the US authorities questioned.
Foley, Sotloff and Kassig were killed by members of the extremist organization, who published horrific recordings of their executions for the organization’s propaganda purposes.
Kurdish forces in Syria arrested the sheikh and another former British citizen, Alexanda Amon Koti, 37, in January 2018 while they were trying to flee to Turkey.
In October 2020, they were handed over to US forces in Iraq and then transferred to Virginia, where they were charged with hostage-taking, conspiracy to kill US citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.
Coty, nicknamed “Ringo”, pleaded guilty in September 2021, and under the agreement he made with the court, he will spend 15 years in prison in the United States before being extradited back to Britain for trial there.
Cell member Mohamed Emwazi was killed in a US drone strike in Syria in November 2015, while the fourth member, Ayn Davis, is in prison in Turkey following being convicted of terrorism.
The sheikh denies the accusations, and his lawyers point to a confusion of identity at the time of his arrest. If convicted, he faces a life sentence.
