IS-linked Australian accused of beating Yazidi girl enslaved in her home

The last of the known Islamic State-linked Australian women in Syria is expected to return home amid allegations a Yazidi girl was enslaved, beaten and raped in the woman's home in Syria a decade ago, the ABC can reveal.

Warning: this article includes graphic descriptions of violence that some readers may find distressing

Sydney woman Hodan Abby spent more than a decade in the self-declared Islamic State (IS) caliphate and Kurdish detention camps after leaving Australia in 2014.

When she left her home in Western Sydney it was with a friend who reportedly declared her desire to marry a jihadi fighter and become a martyr alongside him.

Ms Abby, who is of Somali descent, had been prevented from coming back to Australia under a Temporary Exclusion Order designed to delay the return of a person deemed a terrorism or security threat.

Last month, she was granted permission to return under strict conditions.

The ABC has spoken to Yazidi woman Sara, whose name has been changed, who was held as a slave in the home of a woman believed to be Hodan Abby, known to her by the nom de guerre "Umm Osama".

The Yazidis are a minority group that were targeted for extermination, mass execution and slavery by IS in 2014 in what the UN recognises as a genocide.

Having been abducted by IS members along with thousands of other Yazidi women and children in northern Iraq in 2014, Sara was just nine or 10 years old when she was sold into the home of a foreign IS fighter she knew as "Abu Osama" in neighbouring Syria in 2016.

His wife, Umm Osama, was pregnant with their daughter.

According to Sara, she spent the first three days in their home locked in a room without food.

When she was finally introduced to Umm Osama, her captor tried to convince his wife he'd bought the slave to help around the house, Sara said.

"After three days he told Umm Osama that he had brought me for her because she was about to give birth," Sara told the ABC.

"But his main purpose of taking me there was rape," Sara alleged.

She claimed Umm Osama initially did not realise Sara was being raped, but when she found out, she was furious.

"After she knew that, she started beating me and all my body was having bruises because of her beatings," Sara alleged.

"She beat me and also told me I wanted Osama to sleep with me."

Sara said Abu Osama then started taking her to the nearby house of his friend — another foreign IS fighter known as Abu Yahya — where Sara said Abu Osama would rape her in secret.

Sara said she was sold eight times to different ISIS households during her years in captivity, but she said the worst treatment she received from a woman was from Umm Osama.

"I was like her younger sister and she knew I was getting raped and she was not preventing that from happening," Sara told the ABC exclusively from her home abroad.

Sara discovers Australian link

While Sara never knew Umm Osama's real name, she describes her as English-speaking and having dark skin.

It was only after Sara was freed from IS captivity that she learned the woman she knew as Umm Osama was believed to be Australian.

Sara said the revelation came when she was working with investigators in Germany on a case against Abu Osama's friend, the IS fighter known as Abu Yahya.

"During the investigation I was asked about [Umm Osama] and [the investigators] said she was Australian," Sara said.

While the identification of Hodan Abby as Sara's abuser is not definitive, a former UN human rights specialist who has spent years working on IS cases said he believed this Umm Osama was Hodan Abby, based on what he had been told by multiple Yazidi survivors who gave statements about their time in captivity.

"When we conducted interviews we met with those who were there while Abu Osama was in Syria," the former UN specialist, who wants to remain anonymous to protect ongoing investigations, told the ABC.

"That is how our assessment was that this lady was Australian … it's according to the witnesses."

Unlike some other Australians who went to Syria and Iraq to join IS, very little is publicly known about Hodan Abby's time in Syria.

No photograph of her is in the public domain and the ABC understands that, when she was in the Kurdish detention camps, she was kept in a section away from other IS-linked Australians.

Rodger Shanahan, a Middle East and terrorism expert, has spent a decade tracking the more than 200 Australians who lived in the IS caliphate, including Hodan Abby.

"Only a relatively limited amount is known about Hodan," Dr Shanahan said.

But he did confirm she had a daughter in 2016 and went by a nom de guerre in the caliphate.

"She went by the name Umm Osama," he said, according to a list of detainees he obtained from authorities in Syria after the fall of the caliphate in 2019.

Umm Osama 'was having demons'

Sara recalls she was held for about three or four months in the Osama's home, during which time Umm Osama made her clean the house and do laundry every day.

Sara paints a picture of Umm Osama being deeply troubled by being in the IS caliphate, and unhappy about her husband raping the Yazidi slave.

"Umm Osama was having some issues, she said she was having demons and not doing OK," Sara said.

Sara felt the beatings she received stemmed from Umm Osama's anger towards her husband for raping the slave.

"[Umm Osama] was beating me a lot and she once had me sleep in the shower room for two to three days because she was saying Abu Osama was raping me so that is why she was torturing and beating me and treating me badly," she alleged.

"She was beating me with a wooden stick and throwing things from the refrigerator sometimes, she was not letting me take a shower."

She says at one point Umm Osama threatened to divorce her husband if he continued raping the enslaved child.

Sara claims she also saw Umm Osama try to escape the caliphate.

"One time even she got into a taxi and told the taxi driver to take her out to another country and the taxi driver told Abu Osama so Abu Osama was not letting her go out of the house so often," she said.

Witnesses likely in Australia

Another Yazidi woman has previously told the ABC she witnessed Umm Osama abusing Sara.

The woman, whose name has been changed to Layla, was enslaved by another friend of Abu Osama's and said she frequently visited the house where Sara was held.

"[Sara] was very young and [Umm Osama] was beating [Sara] and one time [Sara] said she was not eating because she was not given food for a long time," Layla told the ABC.

"Abu Osama raped her, and they were beating her as well because I saw bruises on her many times when I visited her," she alleged.

Both Layla and Sara said they would testify against the woman they knew as Umm Osama if charges were laid.

The former UN human rights specialist said he was aware of a number of Yazidi witnesses who came into contact with Abu Osama and his wife but were not held captive by them, including some who now live in Australia.

"If the Australian [authorities] were to cooperate, I'm pretty sure they would identify all these witnesses," he said.

Asked if they were aware of the allegations or had any plans to charge Hodan Abby with slavery-related crimes, the Australian Federal Police said they had no comment.

A spokesperson for the Home Affairs Department said while, it did not comment on the circumstances of individuals, "where Australians returning to Australia have allegedly breached Australian law, they will be investigated and, where appropriate, subject to law enforcement action".

This year, the AFP charged two Australian women with slavery-related offences after they returned from Syria.

'I want her to be punished'

The ABC has repeatedly tried to speak to Hodan Abby's family and her lawyers to understand more about her time in Syria.

Robert Van Aalst, a lawyer who helped Ms Abby and the other Australian women in Syria obtain passports, described her situation as "complex, misunderstood and sad".

He said the family told him they did not want to interact with the media. Her lawyers have not responded to the specific allegations.

What is known is that in late 2014, when she was 18, Ms Abby left her Western Sydney home for Syria with her friend, Hafsa Mohamed, who, according to The Daily Telegraph, boasted online about her desire to marry an IS jihadi and die "for the sake of Allah".

Ms Abby had a daughter in mid-2016 who, according to media reports, later suffered shrapnel wounds that required surgery she was unable to get in Syria.

According to The Daily Telegraph, in a 2024 bid to convince Australian authorities to let her and her daughter come home, Ms Abby wrote a series of handwritten letters and detailed memos claiming she was "tricked and trafficked" into Syria and forced to marry an IS fighter.

In May this year, she was among a group of Australian women who left the al-Roj detention camp for Damascus in an attempt to come home.

The other women and children were able to board flights for Australia, but Ms Abby was not allowed on the plane.

The Australian government had placed her under a Temporary Exclusion Order (TEO), a mechanism designed to delay the return of a person deemed a terror or security threat, intended to buy authorities time to put in place a security plan to mitigate risks to the community.

It remains unclear exactly why Ms Abby was issued the TEO.

International law expert Professor Donald Rothwell said it was possible that being in the same house as a Yazidi slave could be part of the basis for the TEO, but whether that person posed a terror threat today "from the minister's perspective, that would very much depend upon the security assessment".

"It also creates other potential issues because we know that the AFP has been conducting ongoing investigations into the conduct of these Australian women in Syria … under Operation Kurrajong," he said.

"That certainly leaves open the prospect that Miss Abby could be subject to charges on return to Australia, as indeed have some of the other returning Australian women in recent months."

After being barred from boarding the flight back to Australia, Ms Abby stayed in Syria with her daughter, but last month was granted a return permit which allowed her to return under strict conditions.

It is unclear where in Syria she is currently located or when she and her daughter will return to Australia.

The ABC understands the Syrian government put in place a media blackout on sharing details of her current situation.

Ms Abby's daughter is now nine years old, the same age Sara was when she was held captive by the Osamas.

For Sara, she said she hoped Hodan Abby's return would provide her with justice that has eluded her for the past decade.

"If she is back and alive I want her to be punished,"

she said.