ICC Note: The testimony of a Christian teenage boy who survived two years of ISIS occupation. Ismail and his mother did not escape their town of Bartella, Iraq before ISIS invaded and occupied their home. Though they tried to flee by taxi at one point, ISIS checkpoints uncovered who they were and had them sent to prison in Mosul. The following is their story of survival.

01/28/2017 Iraq (Christian Post): A Christian teenager who lived two years under the torturous rule of the Islamic State terrorist organization in the group’s largest Iraqi stronghold has opened up about the frightening experiences he and his mother faced at the hands of the jihadi death cult.

Ismail al-Kanon, a Chaldean Catholic teenager, was just 14-years-old when IS (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) took over large swaths of territory in the Nineveh Plains of Iraq in the summer of 2014.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christians were able to flee from their homes and find safety in the Kurdish north, Ismail and his mother, 54-year-old Jandar Nasi, were not as fortunate to escape from their hometown of Bartella before IS arrived.

“We’re the only ones who stayed, everybody else left,” Ismail, who is now living in Kurdistan, told PRI in a recent interview. “We had no clue what had happened.”

Bartella, which was a predominantly Christian town before IS tookover, was just about emptied when the terror group started their occupation. However, Nasi was too sick to travel and Ismail chose to stay behind to take care and protect his mother.

Three days after IS swept through Bartella, Ismail and Nasi changed their minds and decided to try and flee to the autonomous Kurdistan region and live as refugees.

Although the son and mother were successful in hailing a cab once they left their home, they only made it about halfway to the Kurdish city of Erbil before they were stopped at an IS checkpoint.

Once the militants found out that Ismail and his mother were Christians, they were taken into custody and transported to IS’ largest Iraqi stronghold and Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul.

“I told one of them I was a Christian from Bartella. He ordered me to step out of the car and hit me on the head,” Ismail said of the militant he encountered at the checkpoint in the town of Khazer. “He then tied my hands and took us to Mosul.”

“That was the first time I saw ISIS,” he added.

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