“Since the day ISIS came until even now, we haven’t had a single night of proper sleep,” said Khalid Aziz, 26, a former policeman newly displaced from the recently liberated neighborhood of Mosul, Gogjali. He described nights filled with nightmares or being completely unable to sleep at all.
Gogjali, located on Mosul’s eastern edge, was liberated Wednesday by Iraqi forces.
Khalid and his older brother Raad, as former government workers, were forced into hiding since any employee of the government would be immediately tortured and then killed. This was especially the case for policemen.
While in hiding, Khalid had “given up to the bitter truth” that he would eventually be found. However, “hope” kept him and his brother going, trapped in their home unable to leave for two and a half years.
“The penalty for fleeing was execution,” Raad said as his bottom lip twitched subtly and his eyes looked off to the side.
“You find government personnel, you will see they have gone crazy,” Khalid explained.
He did not leave his house once for two and a half years. His mother or younger brothers would go out to shop or do whatever needed to be done outside the house.
“We would first be interrogated and who was ever interrogated would be tortured and then killed,” Khalid explained what would happen if they had been caught.
Khalid described a massive pit approximately 800 meters from the village where people would be shot and then their bodies thrown into.
“The only thing that kept me from killing myself are my three daughters and my wife,” Khalid said. His wife and daughters are still under ISIS control and he expects that they will be killed as the operation closes in on Mosul.
“They now know I’m a policeman and whoever is a policeman, they will take his family,” Khalid said, convinced of his family’s certain death.
The Aziz brothers recalled to Rudaw that a few days after Gogjali was liberated, ISIS rounded up 72 men over the age of 13 and executed them to make a statement of what will happen to anyone who attempts to leave.
“They were trying to give a message so they were going to those apartments. Any male above the age of 13 were executed,” the brothers said. “They killed 72 policemen and government personnel in front of their families. They took the women of the families in as sex slaves. That was a message that you will join us or you will end up like this.”
Some people were convinced to join the group in order to profit from it, said another resident from Gogjali, 20-year old Wadulla Fati Mahmood.
“We did not join at first, only after a long time. After ISIS selling the idea many times, they actually convinced them to join,” Mahmood said. “They reached a point where they gave it up. The only choice they had left was to join because whenever someone joined ISIS, they had special privileges.”
But, he added, “There was no personal freedom.”
Raad echoed this sentiment while expressing his rejoice for their liberation. “I feel like I am out of prison,” he said as he pulled 2,000 Iraqi dinars out of his pocket and said with a smile, “This is all I have.”
“Regardless of not having anything, the freedom compensates for materials I have lost.”
