Another Ezidi Woman Freed from Islamist Captivity
A Ezidi woman, to protect her privacy we will refer to her as “A”, has been reunited with her family after spending nearly ten years in ISIS captivity. A was a child when she was captured during in 2014 the attacks on Shingal, Iraq, where she was taken across borders to Syria and held as a slave for ten years. Her rescue occurred in a third country, assumed to be Turkey, with the assistance of the a regional Ezidi Rescue Office, which is dedicated to locating and freeing abducted Ezidis.
A was subjected to rape, torture and was sold several times during the 10 years she was in captivity. As part of the IS genocide program she was also forced to wear Hijab which points strongly to that she was also forced to practice islam. She reunited with her father who is among few among her relatives who survived the genocide.
A’s father was overwhelmed with emotion as he embraced his daughter in their hometown of Shingal, expressing disbelief and gratitude at her return. A, who had long feared she would never see her family again, shared her joy in an interview. The Ezidi Rescue Office continues its mission to find other missing Ezidis, with 3,581 individuals already freed. At the moment there are estimations that between 5000 to 10,000 still remain unaccounted for.
A’s abduction was part of a larger campaign by ISIS, which took over large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, kidnapping over 6,400 women and children, many of whom were subjected to sexual slavery and forced labor. Despite ISIS’s territorial defeat by 2019, the group continues to carry out attacks and abductions, especially in remote areas of Iraq and Syria.
