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'This is my job.' Amal Clooney risks her life to take ISIS to court on behalf of a sex slave.

Amal Clooney has revealed she plans to sue ISIS on behalf of a woman who was taken captive by the terrorist organisation at the age of 19.

Speaking to the US Today, the human rights lawyer said her client, Nadia Murad, was sold to an ISIS commander as a sex slave where she was burned by cigarettes and at times raped by multiple men until she fell unconscious.

“I can’t imagine anything worse being done by one human to another,” Clooney said.

The case will undoubtedly put both women’s life at risk – Clooney said Murad has already received threats – but the 38-year-old just couldn’t walk away.

“This is my work,” she said.

Murad, now 23, was kidnapped following the Yazidi genocide in northern Iraq, during which her mother and six of her eight brothers were killed.

And she’s not alone – 3,200 Yazidis are still captive, and Clooney has spoken to several other Yazidi girls who suffered similar horrors to those endured by Murad.

“I did feel a sense of outrage,” she said on Today. “It’s been harrowing to hear the testimony of girls as young as 11 and 12, what’s happened to them. And still we haven’t done anything about them.”

Allied troops are engaged in an ongoing and deadly military intervention in Syria and Iraq in attempt to halt the extremist organisation’s advances, but Clooney insists bombs and bullets are not the solution.

“You can’t kill an idea that way,” she explained. “I think one of the ways to take action against that is to expose their brutality and their corruption. And part of the way to do that is through trial.”

amal clooney taking isis to court
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Clooney and Murad are taking on ISIS. Image: NBC.

In an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, Murad said Clooney has been an enormous support in helping her seek justice for Yazidis.

“She did not talk to me as a well-known world figure that people would love to take a photo with; she talked to me as a sister and guardian,” she said. “She has immense power that made me proud of being a woman.”

Murad, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was recently named a UN Goodwill Ambassador in New York, on the same day Clooney delivered a powerful speech about the plight of victims of ISIS-led genocide.

“I wish I could say that I was proud to be here, but I’m not,” Clooney told UN representatives. “I’m ashamed as a human being that we ignore their cries for help.”

Her campaign has the support of her husband, actor George Clooney. “He met Nadia, too, and I think he was moved," she told Today. "He understands.”