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Samra Kesinovic: ‘ISIS Poster Girl’ Used As Sex Slave Until She Was Beaten To Death Trying To Escape

By Tara Dodrill
Published on: 06:23 PST, Dec 30, 2015

Samra Kesinovic, the Austrian teen who has become known worldwide as the “ISIS poster girl,” was reportedly used as a sex slave until she was beaten to death while trying to escape. Kesinovic, 17, and her 15-year-old friend, Sabina Selimovic, ran away to join the Islamic State in April of last year. A teenage Austrian girl who fled home to join ISIS was used as a sex slave by the terrorist group before she was beaten to death, a former prisoner has revealed.

Both Samra Kesinovic and Sabina Selimovic were featured in photos posted to ISIS websites. Both of the runaways were children of Bosnian refugees who had fled their native land to escape the violent fighting going on in the country during the 1990s. The Austrian teenage girls were shown packing AK-47s and surrounded by armed militants in one of the viral photos.

Just months after Kesinovic arrived in Syria, reports began surfacing online claiming that she was attempting to escape the Islamic State and go back home. While trying to flee from Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold, she was reportedly caught and beaten to death.

Life with ISIS before the fatal beating was allegedly a harsh one for Samra Kesinovic. According to a Daily Mail report, the Austrian teen was used as a sex slave by at least one Islamic State militant. The rape allegations were shared with the media by a former Islamic extremist from Tunisia. The woman maintains that he lived in a Raqqa home with Kesinovic and Selimovic, and the fighters who had claimed them, the Local reports.

According to the statements by the Tunisian woman, the ISIS poster girls were used as “sexual presents” for new ISIS fighters. Officials from the United Nations helped the parents of the girls attempt to locate the teen runaways. Earlier this year, the U.N. investigators announced that a young woman, believed to be Selimovic, was killed during ISIS fighting in Syria.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, an Islamic preacher known as Mirsad O. was reportedly a leading force in the radicalization of the Austrian teens. Mirsad O., also known as Ebu Tejma, was also from Bosnia and now lives in Austria. Tejma has denied claims that he brainwashed Samra Kesinovic and Sabina Selimovic and encouraged them to run away to Syria. Mirsad O. has since been arrested on charges that allege he was funding an ISIS-supporting terror network in Austria.

The parents of the girls lost all contact with them once they ran away. A note left by the teens reportedly read, “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah and we will die for him.” The only other communication received before reports of their deaths became public arrived in the form of SMS messages with a French magazine. Sabina Selimovic, or an individual claiming to be the Austrian teen, said that she had married an Islamic State soldier and felt that in Syria she was finally free to practice her religion in a way that she could not in Vienna.

The teen runaways are far from the only Austrians who have left home to go join ISIS. About 6 percent of the Austrian population (half a million people) are Muslims, with a significant portion of this population once calling Bosnia or Turkey home. Current estimates indicate that approximately 130 citizens have gone to join the jihad against the West. Many of the ISIS converts reportedly stem from the Russian region of Caucasus and were allowed to relocate to the country via a refugee program during the Chechen War.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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