The Islamic terrorist group ISIS surprised observers by releasing over 200 Yazidis after keeping them hostages for eight months.
Most of the freed captives were elderly, in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect. General Hiwa Abdullah told the Associated Press that 40 of the freed captives were children.
The terrorists reportedly gave no reason for the captive’s release.
The captives who were able to speak with reporters shared stories of their captivity and kidnapping. Jar-Allah Frensis, 88, said the terrorists stormed his home in Sinjar and took him along with his wife and son.
“The militants took all of our money and jewelry. We have been living under constant fear till our release,” Frensis told The Associated Press.
Frensis says he doesn’t know what happened to his son.
ISIS released 200 prisoners in January and the Kurdish military said the believed the release was because the prisoners were too much of a burden for their captors.
ISIS terrorists shocked man by releasing 19 Assyrian Christians out of the hundreds they captured during raids last week.
The terrorists at the last minute kept a 6-year-old girl and a negotiator told the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) the terrorists likely plan to use the girl as a bargaining chip.
AINA estimates that over the last week, ISIS has captured up to 373 Christians from various villages.
The UK based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Saturday that a Sharia court ordered the release of 29 captives, not 19, and ISIS is now showing they will ignore their own courts.
“ISIS has claimed for a long time to follow rules, and it claims that these Sharia courts will impose limits,” Graeme Wood of The Atlantic told CNN. “They can attempt to get credibility by showing that they follow rules and that they have some kind of transparent process that follows their particular implementation of Sharia law.”
Witnesses say that at least 15 of the Christians have been killed by the terrorists.
Pope Francis has issued a call to all Christians to stand up and end the death penalty in their home countries.
“It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples’ lives from an unjust aggressor,” Francis said Wednesday in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law according to Catholic News Service.
“All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this, I connect with life imprisonment,” he said. “Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty.”
Most Americans still support the death penalty. A Gallup poll released Wednesday showed 63% of Americans still support capital punishment. The total is still lower than the high of 80% reached in 1994 but still a large majority of citizens.
The Pope spoke out about prisoners being held around the world without trial. In many of those cases, death penalties are being issued without a clear and open process.
“They didn’t feed us much. I used to pass out a lot, but I would make trouble for him as much as possible and fight when I could,” a 15-year-old girl called Sara said. “Many times I thought of suicide but I kept thinking of my family and my brother. I lived only for them.”
Sara is one of a group of Yazidis captured by ISIS who were able to escape to safety in Iraq. She’s now speaking out about the conditions they experienced and the horrors of torment from their captors.
Sara, her brother, pregnant sister-in-law and other Yazidis were captured when trying to escape Sinjar. They had been hiding in a farmhouse.
Sara said all the women were loaded into trucks and then the terrorists gunned down all the men. Sara’s brother was among the men slaughtered.
She said she was sold to a pair of older ISIS terrorists who were living in a mansion taken from a local family. The men would regularly drain blood from her body; leaving her so weak she could barely handle daily activities such as eating or drinking.
She said that Christian women were forced to wear Muslim attire by the terrorist and were kept chained until they would renounce Christ and follow Islam.
Israel’s Channel 2 is reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a line before the start of Operation Protective Edge regarding the release of prisoners in peace deals with the terrorist group Hamas or anyone negotiating on their behalf.
Netanyahu said anyone convicted of terrorist acts would not be eligible for release from prison in any negotiation.
Netanyahu’s reasoning said despite the public statements by Palestinian leaders condemning the killing of three kidnapped Israeli teens, the celebratory welcome given to terrorists released as part of a previous peace deal conflict with the words.
The edict of the Prime Minister is expected to make peace negotiations more difficult over the next few months. Prisoner releases along with a freeze on construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank were demands of Palestinians for peace talks.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly is going to seek approval from the Arab League to offer a nine-month negotiation process to create a Palestinian state.
Two American missionaries that have been imprisoned in North Korea for their faith were brought out for a “press conference” designed to have the government generate propaganda.
Kenneth Bae and Jeffrey Fowle were given five minutes with a reporter to send messages to friends and family along with pleading for the U.S. government to take steps to free them.
“Right now, what I can say to my friends and family is continue to pray for me and continue in efforts in getting me released from here,” Bae told reporter Will Ripley. Bae has been facing a sentence of 15 year hard labor for “hostile acts to bring down the government” although those “hostile acts” were never presented to anyone.
“The only hope that I have is to have someone from the U.S. comes,” Bae said. “But so far, the latest I’ve heard is that there has been no response yet. So I believe that officials here are waiting for that.”
Bae’s family says he’s suffering from diabetes along with heart and liver problems.
Fowle told reporters that within a month he could be sharing Bae’s cell at the labor camp. He said his treatment so far has been “good” although he was speaking with North Korean officials sitting beside him.
