When you torture a person for long periods you might get a very passionate human rights defender but most probably you will get a beast whose only concern is to seek his revenge in the best way possible.

Polygamy was not a problem in the '80s. I do not remember one single woman in Baghdad who was the second or third wife. Now it's a very common story. Sometimes two wives living with a man in a 5 by 10 foot room. It's a very miserable economic situation.

In Iraq, we did have dictators, we did have times of war but it never reached the point where one person, or a group, would be attacking another group and would be enslaving all the women of that group.

What has ISIS done to the women in the cities they have conquered? Direct enslavement, humiliation and turning women into concubines to be bought and sold. This was something nobody expected to see in Iraq.

Young women growing into situations with no parents are usually material for exploitation in the brothels.

In the very first part of the constitution there is the article that refuses any law or any article in discrepancy with Sharia. We Iraqis feel it was imposed on us. It wasn't a local thing. Iraqis have led a sort of secular life for almost 50 years.

When I was a student, I was dressed like a modern girl and I wore long shorts. That is part of the past. There is fear in the streets. You cannot go out in the streets. You are looked at as if you come from another age. If there are any militias on your street, they will tell you to go back home and dress decently. They could beat you up or punish you worse than that. Some of us who have grown up in Baghdad are used to wearing what we please and walking where we please.