Iraqi brothers who escaped Mosul reveal what it’s like to have your limbs hacked off by ISIS
Azad Hassan, 21, and his brother Mohamed had their right hands amputated after being accused of stealing flour from baker
A PAIR of Iraqi brother have relived in horrific detail what it was like to have their limbs hacked off by ISIS.
His right arm strapped with a tourniquet and numbed by anaesthetic, Azad Hassan told how he sat before the crowd waiting for militants to chop off his hand as a punishment.
But first, he had watch them do the same to his brother.
Freed from ISIS rule in Mosul by Iraqi forces who are fighting to recapture the city, the Hassan family bear more scars than most from two years spent under the jihadis' self-declared caliphate.
The family tragedy parallels Mosul's own recent history – from its storming by fanatics in 2014 and the imposition of the terror group's ultra-hardline rule, to the military campaign to retake it which has led to ferocious fighting in the city’s eastern districts.
A dispute over flour deliveries brought the two brothers before an ISIS court more than a year ago.
Militants had already taken another brother a few months before – a document given to the family informed them he was shot after being suspected of working with the Iraqi army, but they never saw his body.
And another of their brothers, who is younger, has joined the Sunni militia brigades fighting in support of the army around Mosul.
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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.
Blood seeps through bandages over wounds on his legs 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 (ISIS) hurt my family badly," said Hussein, whose wife is Kurdish.
“We are all Iraqi, all the same people. I don't know why they did this to us,” he added.
Iraqi forces, engaged in a nine-week-old US-backed campaign to crush the extremist group in its last urban bastion in the country, have retaken about a quarter of Mosul – but their advance has been slow and punishing.
As they gradually gain ground, those who have escaped the jihadis’ rule recall a brutal life, with religious police constantly patrolling to enforce their merciless laws.
Men were forced to wear long beards, while women had to cover up from head to foot.
Some people were beaten for minor infractions, while others were shot – their corpses sometimes crucified – with punishments decided by ISIS courts.
One refugee in Khazer camp outside the city showed scars from where he says his teeth were pulled out and his tongue slashed for smoking in public.
Islamic State also systematically killed, captured and enslaved thousands from the Yazidi minority – regarded by the militants as devil-worshippers – in the region around Mosul in northern Iraq.
Christian towns in the area were also targeted for desecration, as well as Shias who they branded heretics.
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 fell foul of the fanatics 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 ISIS 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 the militants had gathered hundreds to watch since early morning.
A doctor administered anaesthetic to their wrists.
In the sick video, a militant fighter is the first to be punished – screaming "Allahu akbar" after his hand was hacked off by a masked jihadist who smashes 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, before Azad's hand was finally 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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