2 Yazidi women win EU human rights prize

Brussels: The European Parliament on Thursday awarded its Sakharov Prize to Nadia Murad (L) and Lamiya Aji Bashar (R), two Yazidi women who were held as sex slaves by Islamic State militants and have campaigned for human rights since escaping. Murad and Bashar were among thousands of women and girls abducted, tortured and sexually abused by IS fighters after the militants rounded up Yazidis in Iraq in 2014. Murad, now 23, was held by IS in Mosul but escaped her captors in November 2014. She eventually made her way to Germany and has since become active as an advocate for the Yazidis, and refugee and women's rights in general. She has called for the massacre of  Yazidis to be recognised as genocide. Bashar, 18, was captured in the same raid as Murad and also kept as a sex slave by IS. She escaped in March but was disfigured and blinded in one eye when a landmine went off as she fled. reuters