FBR Report: Please Tell the World What Happened

We first met Nezar Samuel in January in the ruins of Sinjar City. He is a Yezidi whose wife and two small children were captured two years ago by ISIS. At the same time his mother, father, sister, brothers, uncles, and aunts had been executed by ISIS and their bones were in a mass grave out side of Sinjar. (Not Alone – White Monkey in Kurdistan) The Yezidi have been especially singled out for murder, rape and enslavement by ISIS. Nezar’s story is a tragedy thousands here are living.

We met him again on this mission and he showed us his wedding picture, with him, his wife, his father, mother and extended family. “Dead, dead, dead, dead,” he said as he pointed to each person in the photo. Of all in the photo, only his wife is alive and is now a captive of ISIS with their two children.

I told him, “You are my brother and I love you. We will do our best to tell your story and pray and do all we can to rescue your wife.” I then prayed about what to do next, what to commit to. I said, “I will be with you in this until your wife and two children are set free. You are special to me and I am with you. My family, our team and I am praying with you to God for their freedom and I will ask all I can to help.” We decided then to go to the mass grave where his family was killed. Nezar led us along the front line to the site. It was a shallow depression in the ground, about 60’ by 30’, and was located next to a destroyed school. A mile away were the ISIS front lines. Here in the mass grave over 70 men, women and children had been shot and beat to death by ISIS and buried here. Skulls, hair, bones and scraps of clothes were scattered about and bones protruded from the earth. Some of the small skulls, belonging to children, had their teeth bashed in.

Nezar stood silently looking at the bones of the mass grave. Then a shudder rose through his chest and he put his hands to his face and began to sob. He cried and shook and sank to the ground. After a while he stood back up and I went to him and put my arms around him, holding him closely. He took my hand and held it tightly. I prayed and told him I was so sorry as tears came to my eyes. He raised his head and began to call out to his family. Through his sobs he called to them and talked to them.

I kept holding him and praying. Then he looked at me, nodded and said, “Thank you, thank you. Please tell the world what happened. It is not just my family who have been killed and captured, there are thousands more. Please act in time to save the living captives. I found out my own wife and two children are still alive and being held in the basement of a building along with others by ISIS in Syria. I did not come here to cry today. I have been crying for two years already and it has not made anything different. But as I cried with you today, I felt better.”

Dear reader, please pray with us as we try every way we can to set Nezar’s family and other Yezidi captives free.

Thank you and God bless you,
Dave, family and Free Burma Rangers in Kurdistan