Kidnapped boy raised by American ISIS woman
Tehran (KNA) - In August 2014, ISIS overran Ayham's town in Iraq's Sinjar province and targeted its Yazidi population, members of a religious minority the terror group considers "devil worshippers."
Families were separated, women and girls taken as sex slaves, men of fighting age shot and killed, and boys abducted to be turned into child soldiers. Nearly 10,000 Yazidis were killed or kidnapped.
As the horrors unfolded, Ayham was by his mother's side while she was delivering a baby. By the time his brother was born, the three of them were trapped behind enemy lines, separated from the rest of their family.
Ayham was 4 years old when ISIS captured him. He was sold three times, passed from one household to another until he was taken by Sam and her husband, a jihadi of Moroccan descent. They lived in Raqqa, ISIS' former seat of power in Syria.
In their custody, he went from a little boy to a radical in training. Everything he knew was taken from him: his identity, his family, even his name, as the couple renamed him Abdullah.
want to go next, this family, I want to go next to her," Ayham says of the woman who helped raise him. "I was next to her, when I am in Raqqa. Her name was Um Yousuf." Um Yousuf is Sam, an American woman and member of ISIS. Ayham says he loves her. But she was also his captor. Source: CNN