ISIS Widow: I Stayed with my Husband for the Sake of the Children

US citizen Sally El-Hassani, widow of US-Morrocan ISIS member Moussa El-Hassani, revealed that they brought thousands of dollars with them to buy slaves from a market in Raqqa. Her husband, who was killed in the Syrian city, had sex with two of the slaves. She also tried to escape Raqqa and was jailed and sexually abused by ISIS for three months.

In an interview with CNN, Sally, 32, said her journey began in Elkhart, Indiana, where she and her husband worked at a delivery company. They lived with Matthew, her son from her first marriage to a US soldier, and their daughter Sarah. Moussa El-Hassani came up with a plan to move to his native Morocco for a year in 2014.

He then promised her a holiday when she went to Hong Kong in 2014. The couple was planning to move to Morocco to start a new, cheaper life, she says, and needed to go through Hong Kong to transfer money. Days later, Sally says, she found herself on the Turkish border with Syria, on the edge of ISIS territory.

There, her husband held her daughter while she held her son confronted with an impossible choice: Abandon her daughter to ISIS and save her son, or follow her husband into ISIS' territory.

Following him was the only way to protect her daughter, she indicated.

"To stay there with my son or watch my daughter leave with my husband -- I had to make a decision," Sally, told CNN in northern Syria in a prison managed by Kurds, adding: "maybe I would never have seen my daughter again ever, and how can I live the rest of my life like that."

She explained that their marriage faced a difficult phase and her husband used drugs and cheated on her, showing few signs of devout faith, but he came up with a plan to move to his native Morocco for a year.

When they reached the Turkish border, Hassani refused to let her leave the hotel room, saying the city was "too dangerous." He also ordered her to wear the veil if she were to leave the room.

"Once we got to Sanliurfa everything changed," she says, adding: "I was like a prisoner in the room."

She admitted that in her twenties, she was so submissive to her husband, recalling: "This was years in the making. He separated me from my family. I could not see that he was the one that was wrong. It was always 'no, my husband is right.'"

"People can think whatever they want but they have not been put in a place to make a decision like that," she commented.

Her relationship with Hassani changed once they became inside the ISIS town.

"Before he would spoil me. 'I love you.' We were very much in love. The romance never left. As soon as we came here it changed. I was a dog. I didn't have any choice. He was extremely violent. And there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing," she told the interviewer.

Sally says she feared divorcing him as that would leave her and her children yet more vulnerable in ISIS' society. She said at one point she was jailed by ISIS for three months while pregnant for trying to escape and for alleged espionage for the US.

In 2014, the terror group controlled Yazidi areas in west Iraq, and many of the younger women were being sold as slaves, some purely for the purposes of sexual abuse.

Sally said her husband suggested some Yazidi slaves would help keep Sally company while he was away, and he took her to the slave market. There she saw Soad.

"When I met Soad, I couldn't think about money, I needed to help her," she said. The teenage girl cost her $10,000 half the money she says she smuggled with her from their US savings. She brought Soad home, and soon, her husband began raping her.

He soon decided to "buy" his own slave, using another $7,500 from their savings to purchase Bedrine, who was younger than Soad. She was also raped by Hassani. The family also bought a young boy, Aham, for $1,500 later still.

Asked by CNN if she felt she enabled the girls' serial rape, she said: "In every house that she was in before that was the same situation, but she did not have the support of someone like me. We constantly talked about going to see her mother. I was going to get her out and she was going to go back home."

Sally continued to say that no one will ever know what it is like to watch their husband rape a 14-year-old girl.

"Then she comes to you -- me -- after crying and I hold her and tell her it's going to be OK. Everything is going to be fine, just be patient," she indicated.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday stepped up his criticism of Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), built on the Nile’s main tributary, which Cairo fears will threaten its water supply.

He rejected what he described as “unilateral measures” along the Nile Basin, warning: “Anyone who thinks Egypt will turn a blind eye to threats to its water security is mistaken.”

Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo with visiting Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Sisi said the water issue had become “part of a broader campaign of pressure on Egypt to achieve other objectives.”

“We will remain vigilant and will take all measures guaranteed under international law to safeguard our people’s existential resources,” he vowed.

Sisi stressed that Egypt does not oppose development in Nile Basin countries but insisted such projects must not affect the volume of water reaching Egypt. “The best way to deal with the Nile Basin is to respect everyone’s interests,” he said.

Negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, under African Union mediation, have been stalled since April 2021, prompting Cairo to appeal to the UN Security Council for pressure on Addis Ababa.

Egypt, which relies on the Nile for 98% of its water, receives an annual quota of 55.5 billion cubic meters. It is already below the global water poverty line, with only 500 cubic meters per person annually, according to the Ministry of Irrigation.

Sisi noted that Egypt and Sudan together receive just 4% of the Nile Basin’s 1,600 billion cubic meters of water, amounting to 85 billion cubic meters.

“This is the only source of life for the two downstream states,” he said, adding that Egypt had never called for “fair water sharing”, which would mean dividing the entire basin’s volume.

Egypt hopes Uganda’s current chairmanship of the Nile Basin Initiative’s consultation mechanism can foster consensus among basin states.

The two leaders inaugurated the Egypt-Uganda Business Forum in Cairo and witnessed the signing of five agreements on water resources, agricultural cooperation and food security, investment, mutual visa exemptions for official passports, and diplomatic cooperation.

The talks come just weeks before Ethiopia plans to inaugurate GERD in September. Former Assistant Foreign Minister for African Affairs Mohamed Hegazy said Cairo is counting on Kampala’s role in dam-related consultations.

Relations between Cairo and Kampala have been warming, with Uganda recently hosting a “2+2” dialogue between the foreign and water ministers of both countries. Sisi said Egypt views Uganda as a key partner in the southern Nile Basin and seeks to make it a primary beneficiary of Egypt’s development support mechanisms.

ISIS Widow: I Stayed with my Husband for the Sake of the Children