I.S. militants publish prices for Christian slaves in Iraq

Iraq, November 6, 2014: A document issued by Islamic State (IS) militants has revealed the prices that captured Christian and Yazidi women and children are to be sold for as slaves in Iraq.

The prices for Christian and Yazidi slaves vary according to age: 40 to 50-year-old women are to cost 50,000 dinars (£27/ €34/ $43) each; 30 to 40-year-olds are to be sold for 75,000 dinars (£40/ €51/ $64) each; and 20 to 30-year-olds cost 100,000 dinars (£54/ €68/ $84) each. A girl aged 10-20 years is to be sold for 150,000 dinars (£80/ €102/ $128), and a male or female child aged one to nine years is 200,000 dinars (£107/ €136/ $170).

The document explains that IS has decided to control the prices of the slaves due to a “significant decrease” in the market selling “women and spoils of war”. IS has vowed to execute anyone who does not abide by the price controls it has imposed, and individuals are not authorised to purchase more than three – unless the buyers are foreigners such as Turks, Syrians and citizens of the Gulf Arab states.

IS militants took over large swathes of central and northern Iraq over the summer, causing at least 160,000 Christians to flee to safer areas. The few Christians remaining under Islamist rule have the choice to pay jizya (a humiliating tax indicating their inferior status), convert to Islam, flee or be killed.

Sharia law allows Muslims to take human beings as slaves as part of their war booty in the context of jihad.

– barnabas team