Scotland on Sunday: When a group of Kurdish women and girls disappeared from their homes in Iraq in 1989, their families assumed they would never see them again.

But instead of being murdered during a campaign of mass arrests and summary executions, it now appears that the 18 women and children were abducted to be sold as sex slaves in Egypt.

Evidence was uncovered in documents found among the debris of the ransacked Kirkuk offices of Saddam’s feared intelligence and security agency. These detail the names of the women, who were aged between 14 and 29 at the time, and state that they were sold to Egyptian brothels.