Escaped Islamic State Wives In Hiding In Turkey

Two former members of Islamic State's elite women's police unit, known as al Khansa Brigade, who were married off to foreign fighters are now in hiding.

The women escaped the Syrian city Raqqa, an IS stronghold, and were smuggled to southern Turkey earlier this year. They are afraid IS fighters will find them.

Doaa (not her real name), 20, left Syria after her Saudi Arabian husband, an IS fighter, blew himself up in a suicide attack.

She has told Sky News she grew to love her husband and he convinced her that life in the so-called Islamic State was the right path.

Her role in the brigade was to punish women who didn't follow IS's strict rules. She even carried out the lashing herself.

She explained the different levels of punishment: "If the woman tries to escape when we arrest her then she'll get 60 lashes.

"Otherwise, when it comes to clothes, if she's not wearing the abaya (Islamic dress) or she's wearing high heels then it's the standard 40 lashes."

Doaa says she now regrets what she did.

"What upset me most was lashing old women when they weren't wearing the proper clothes.

"These women were like my mother. I mean for girls, yes, they should wear the proper attire but old women no.

"They'd lash them and humiliate them."

The al Khansa Brigade was set up by IS last year to crack down on women who don't abide by their strict laws, including that they be fully covered in public and always chaperoned by a male.

It involves four weeks of weapons training and the women are paid around £70 per month.

They mainly patrol the streets, man checkpoints and raid houses.

Umm Ous (not her real name) says she met many foreign women - from Europe and even Japan - in the Brigade.

But whereas the Arab women were in charge of policing and running the city's affairs, she says non-Arab women were often allowed on the front lines.

She told Sky News about a British female IS fighter known as "Umm Bakr."

Umm Ous says she was around 23 years old: "(She) came to Raqqa because it was an Islamic State (city), where the true religion is. They all came to fight the non-believers. They prayed and fasted."

Like many women in Raqqa, Umm Ous was married off to foreign fighters.

Her first husband was a Turkish IS commander who was killed in battle.

Months later her parents made her marry an Egyptian militant who left her behind after falling out with the IS group and escaping.

She admits she never loved either of the men: "I married him because it was what was available and the situation didn't allow for anything else."

In fact, it was hardly a real marriage.

"Most of the time I'd stay at my parent's house because he wasn't around. He behaved normally, he'd come home for two or three days and then go back to fight.

"So in the whole year I probably saw him for less than a month altogether. And then he was martyred."

They may have escaped but Doaa and Umm Ous are far from free. They are in Turkey illegally and say IS fighters are looking for them.