ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – The last thing that came to Saad Khalaf Ali’s mind as his Islamic State interrogators smothered him with a plastic bag was his two wives and children. Then everything went dark.

He was jolted back to his senses by an electric current coursing through his body, and came round soaked in water and gasping for breath on the floor of a prison in northern Iraq.

The former policeman is one of many Iraqis to have suffered at the hands of Islamic State, which tortures, executes or beheads anyone deemed immoral or an opponent of its ideology and its goal of creating a caliphate across the Muslim world.

Saad withstood the punishment but succumbed to psychological pressure when the militants threatened to slaughter his entire family.

He confessed to informing Kurdish and Iraqi forces about Islamic State positions, an action frequently punishable by beheading or shooting at point blank range.

Read the article “Tortured by ISIS, Rescued before Execution: Freed Hostages Recount Ordeal” on news.yahoo.com.