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Islamic State fighters routinely rape girls as young as nine held hostage at the terror group's training camps, it has been claimed.

A purported former IS member turned whistleblower says all the group's fighters are told it is their God-given right to rape non-Muslim prisoners.

He claimed that those preparing to sacrifice themselves on suicide missions are particularly encouraged to subject prisoners to depraved sexual ordeals, and that many of those would-be martyrs are British.

'I saw many foreign recruits who were put in the suicide squads not because they were "great and God wanted it" as IS commanders praised them in front of us, but basically because they were useless for IS,' said the whistleblower, calling himself Sherko Omer.

'They spoke no Arabic, they weren’t good fighters and had no professional skills. They were brainwashed into the “women in heaven” and those they could rape on earth before they eventually killed themselves.'

Among other dramatic claims, Mr Omer said:

* Islamic State fighters are promised 72 'eternal virgins' in heaven if they are martyred while fighting for the group;

* Non-Muslim women help captive are fair game for sexual exploitation because 'God wills it';

* Some Muslim women who join the group are promised rewards in the hereafter if they willingly offer their bodies to jihadists in 'Sex for Jihad' programmes - although it is mostly commanders who benefit;

* Turkish soldiers turn a blind eye to the movements of extremists back-and-forth across the border with Syria.

Mr Omer, an Iraqi Kurd whose real identity has been hidden behind a pseudonym for security reasons, gave his account of life within Islamic State's militia in a exlusive Q&A with Kurdish journalist Rozh Ahmad.

In the article published by Your Middle East, he described how he was tricked into joining the extremist group after initially trying to join the Free Syrian Army to fight the regime of President Bashar Assad.

He said Islamists within the Kurdish community in Halabja, northern Iraq, arranged for him to meet contacts in Turkey who took him to a training camp on that country's border with Syria.

It was only when he arrived that he realised he had been brought to an Islamic State camp.

Because of Mr Omer's technical background, he was not drilled for the battlefield but instead trained as a communications and technological expert.

He said that as a new recruit he found that Islamic State commanders were 'very nice and respectful at the camp', and there was an atmosphere of 'friendship and brotherhood'. But he soon saw things that he felt compromised his moral values.

'IS emirs and commanders ... believe it is permissible to sleep with women prisoners even against their will if they are infidels, non-Muslims and apostate women,' he said.

'This happened to Christian women in Al-Raqqa after their husbands were publically beheaded and I witnessed it...

'I saw six jihadists demanding that a Christian woman and her daughter become their wives. The daughter was about 12-13-years-old.

'I told the jihadists forcing women is forbidden in Islam and children can't be touched under any circumstances. They loaded their guns in my face and told me to leave.'

Mr Omer said he took the decision to escape from Islamic State after he witnessed the beheading of a fellow Kurd, a fighter for the Kurdish People's Protection Units who was captured in battle.