STARVATION started to set in four days after 11-year-old Fawzia Amin Saydo was brutally kidnapped by ISIS fighters.
Handed plates of meat, she and dozens of other desperate women and children realised something was wrong as soon as they started eating.
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Having been barbarically left without food for days, they had little choice but to accept it.
As a feeling of sickness consumed them, murderous ISIS thugs revealed the truth: they had been eating the meat of slaughtered babies.
But that was just the beginning of the unimaginable suffering and inhumane conditions Fawzia was forced to endure for a decade.
Ten years of hell saw her being kidnapped from her home in Iraq, being bought and sold as a slave in Syria, and then ending up held captive in the Gaza Strip.
And she was finally rescued earlier this month after issuing a desperate cry for help online – with activists successfully lobbying for her release in a secret operation overseen by the Israelis.
After being held as a slave in one of the world’s deadliest war zones – brave Fawzia revealed her harrowing ordeal to The Sun in an interview with documentarian Alan Duncan.
She spoke of being held prisoner by Hamas – just like she was by ISIS – and said there was “no difference” between the two terror groups.
And she described the horrific conditions in Gaza, telling how she saw hospitals being used as Hamas bases by armed fighters and how she was beaten, abused and held captive.
Her lawyer Zemfira Dlovani told The Sun how Fawzia, now 21, has been left so traumatised, she can only recall around 15 per cent of her plight from the past 10 years.
She put the captive Fawzia in touch with ex-Brit squaddie-turned-filmmaker Duncan – who helped lobby for the rescue mission.
Fawzia contacted him over WhatsApp saying: “I am not safe. I am very afraid. What should I do?”
Duncan, who has spent years investigating ISIS’s crimes – speaking to both perpetrators and victims, said: “There were times she had given up hope she would ever be free.”
But now Fawzia can tell her story – giving a candid account of her ordeal, and compelling testimony about the crimes of both Hamas and ISIS – while still living in fear of terrorists.
Fawzia was one of thousands of the Yazidi people who were subjected to genocide by ISIS, with an estimated 5,000 murdered and more than 10,000 kidnapped.
She was just 11 years old when barbaric Islamic State fighters stormed her hometown of Sinjar, northern Iraq, in August 2014.
Men were slaughtered while thousands of women and children were abducted by bloodthirsty extremists.
Fawzia’s two brothers, aged seven and ten, were banished to a camp to be indoctrinated and trained as child soldiers.
Though they managed to escape, Fawzia endured years of violence and rape at the hands of vicious ISIS fighters.
She and dozens of other helpless women and girls were dragged to Tal Afar before being sent to Syria.
Fawzia revealed how they were starved for four days before heartless terrorists finally gave them something to eat when they made it to the city in northwest Iraq.
I always did what I was told because I was so young and very scared.
Fawzia
Speaking just after her release, she told The Sun: “They cooked rice and also meat and brought it to us.
“Because we were so hungry, we just ate what was on the table.
“While we were eating we knew something was wrong because the taste was weird but we just ate because we were hungry.
“After, we all had stomach ache and felt sick.”
Ruthless IS brutes then revealed their heinous act.
“When we were done, they told us that the meat was from the babies,” Fawzia said.
“There was a woman who had a heart attack at that moment and died.
“They showed us pictures of the beheaded kids and babies and said ‘these are the kids you ate’.
“It is very hard but it was not our fault, they forced us but of course it is very hard for us that this happened. Nothing was in our hands.”
Inconsolable mothers wept and screamed, realising why in Tal Afar they had been so callously separated from their babies.
One mother recognised her baby by their hand in photos they were shown, Fawzia recalled.
Enslaved by brutal IS thugs, Fawzia was hauled to the Syrian city of Raqqa in early 2015.
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She was imprisoned for nine months in an underground prison with around 200 others in vile conditions.
“We were held in the dark the whole time. We never saw the sunlight,” she said.
“We were in a prison, we didn’t do anything, we couldn’t go outside.
“We had to drink dirty water, some children died. It was a very tough time.
“These men came in and if they liked a girl they took them with them.”
Fawzia was bought and sold five times by remorseless IS fighters in the several years she was held in Syria.
The fifth man who bought her was a Palestinian ISIS militant more than ten years her senior.
The thug, 24, used drugs to rape a then very young Fawzia.
She said: “At the beginning, I would hide in the bathroom until he was asleep because I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I was scared. I didn’t want him to do anything.
“When he noticed I was hiding, one day he gave me drugs and I fell asleep and he raped me.”
He repeatedly physically and sexually abused Fawzia, and by the tender age of 15, she had given birth to a son and a daughter.
Fawzia became a devoted mum to her two children – despite still being a child herself.
In 2018, ISIS was finally driven out of its final territory Syria and she lost contact with her captor.
The young mum was then sent to Al-Hawl camp, which by early December 2018 held 10,000 people – later swelling to more than 60,000.
Notoriously grim Al-Hawl, which sits in the desert of northeast Syria, was also home to merciless ISIS terrorists and their families – including Westerners who went to join the caliphate.
When I was in Israel and I knew there was no Hamas anymore and I was free, I was very happy. I could breathe again.
Fawzia
Fawzia said: “ISIS women were very bad to me, they forced me to work for them.
“I always did what I was told because I was so young and very scared. They also tried to force me to be Muslim.”
Eight months after she was taken to the camp, Fawzia said she received word her Palestinian captor was in prison in Idlib, Syria.
Fearing for her children’s future as they would likely be rejected from her community, Fawzia went to Gaza to live with his family.
She was taken via Turkey and Egypt with a fake passport before being driven into Gaza in 2020.
Fawzia said: “The underground tunnel from Idlib was so tight, there was no air. Some people died. We then walked 31 hours to the next place in Turkey.”
But once in Gaza, Fawzia was subjected to vile treatment from her dead husband’s family.
She was regularly beaten and – under Hamas’ reign – was virtually imprisoned in their home.
Fawzia dismissed reports she had remarried her dead husband’s brother while in Gaza and told how she was kept under Hamas’ boot.
She said: “I was never free to do what I wanted. If I was, I would have gone out of Gaza earlier.
“I could not do that, I always had to stay under their control.
“There was one time Hamas held a gun to my head and to my side when I went outside with her friend.
“They said it was not allowed.”
How Fawzia Amin Saydo was rescued
By Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter
IT was a complex operation several months in the making.
Having suffered at the hands of terrorists for a decade, Fawzia Amin Saydo was desperate to get home to the family she had been cruelly snatched from as a child.
After nine years of abuse, Fawzia managed to send out a TikTok video begging for help after Israel invaded Gaza following the October 7 atrocity.
In the video, in which she wore a hijab and covered part of her face with a crying emoji, she said: “I hope you can rescue me from this place.
“If anyone comes and enters Palestine, no matter the location, I will go to them.”
Her lawyer, Zemfira Dlovani, told The Sun how after she told of Fawzia’s ordeal by a Yazidi activist Ronai Chaker in June she instantly contacted her directly.
Dlovani said: “She [Fawzia] said do whatever you need to do to get me out of here because I am very scared and I’m in a very bad situation here.”
The attorney contacted squaddie turned documentarian Alan Duncan, who helped free slave Naveen Rasho from Al-Hawl compound.
Duncan made contact with Fawzia – and began to help rallying support for a rescue mission.
Dlovani added: “We all spoke a lot to Fawzia to try and give her hope and told her to stay calm. She was scared and wanted to get out of Gaza as soon as possible.
“It took three months, it was a very intense time. She was very, very scared.”
The secret mission involved Israel, the US, and Iraq – including undercover agents.
Dlovani, Duncan, Chaker, activist Hussein Baadre, Israel-based journalist Jonathan Spyer and businessman Steve Maman all helped lobby for the rescue.
But The Sun understands that the final decision to launch the mission came from the Israeli Defence Force – who planned the operation alongside Cogat, the Israeli agency that works in Gaza and the West Bank.
On October 1, after weeks of meticulous planning – Fawzia received a phone call.
It was time to leave.
A vehicle was sent to collect Fawzia from close to the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Drones were used to keep a watchful eye on the vehicle before it arrived at the crossing and she was transferred into a UN ambulance to be taken into Israel.
Anxious Fawzia was then taken to Allenby Bridge crossing by US embassy officials, which connects with Jordan.
Fawzia was taken into the care of the Iraqi consulate before being flown to Baghdad and then Erbil the following day.
The final stint of the journey back to Sinjar was taken by car, when she was tearfully reunited with her family.
Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British troops in Afghanistan, acted as a mediator during Fawzia’s rescue.
He told The Sun: “Alan provided intelligence to the IDF which allowed them to mount an operation to bring her out of Gaza.
“It would have been secretly, with some sort of communication between Fawzia and the IDF. There are big risks involved there for Fawzia in particular.
“Gaza is obviously a warzone, so there is always a hazard. The IDF is very strong there.
“The critical thing I rescuing her was to ensure secrecy in the process so Hamas didn’t get wind of what was going on and couldn’t have taken action to prevent it.
“I’m sure they would have [tried to stop the rescue] if they knew, I think they would have done all they could to prevent her getting away.
“They probably would have killed her if they suspected anything, if they suspected any communication between her and the IDF.”
Fawzia told how she was treated as a “sabaya” – or slave – by Hamas.
After Hamas’ atrocious massacre in Israel on October 7 and abduction of hundreds of hostages sparked Israel to invade Gaza, Fawzia was sent to work as a slave in a hospital.
She said: “All hospitals were being used as Hamas bases.
“They all had weapons, everyone had weapons everywhere.”
Fawzia’s rescue from Gaza was months in the making in a complex operation orchestrated by several individuals as well as authorities in Israel, the US, and Iraq – risking her life by communicating with them while locked in a terrorist state.
On October 1, she was finally freed from terrorists’ chains and eventually reunited with her family in Iraq.
But after her rescue was confirmed, Hamas concocted a statement claiming Fawzia had been willingly living in Gaza – and only wanted to leave because of the war.
Fawzia said: “What Hamas says is wrong, it is an absolute lie. I was never free, I was forced to stay in the house.
“When I was in Israel and I knew there was no Hamas anymore and I was free, I was very happy. I could breathe again.
“They were very bad, they forced us, they killed people, they forced me to be there. Why would I be there until now if I wasn’t forced to.
“These people who say it’s not true, it’s lies, that these things never happened to me, they should have been there instead of me, in my place, then they could talk about that.
“There is no difference between Hamas and ISIS.
“I didn’t believe I would get rescued until I did.”
But a heartbroken Fawzia declines to speak of her children, now five and six, who she has not seen for several months.
The genocide of the Yazidis
By Henry Holloway, Deputy Foreign Editor
FEW people suffered more under the vicious boot of ISIS than the Yazidis.
Thousands of women and girls from the Kurdish minority group were forced into sexual slavery by the vicious terror group.
And the terrorists simply killed all the group’s men they could get their blood-stained hands on.
It is estimated at least 5,000 Yazidis were killed, at least 10,000 kidnapped, and some 500,000 were forced to leave their homes.
The United Nations recognises the barbarity as nothing short of genocide.
ISIS first attacked the Yazidis during their bloody rise to power in 2014, butchering their way through their communities in northern Iraq.
Massacres were widespread – with victims being gunned down, beheaded or even buried alive.
Disturbing accounts detail atrocities such as a mother being forced to eat pieces of her own baby, or women being burned alive for refusing to have sex with ISIS fighters.
Mass graves are still being discovered from this period – with 30 more bodies discovered this month in Hamadan.
But those who weren’t killed were forced into slavery by ISIS.
Yazidi women and children were bought, sold and subjected to forced conversation to ISIS’s warped version of Islam.
They were turned into slaves – sold, raped and abused,
Yazidi women who were pregnant were given forced abortions – and then raped by ISIS fighters so they could give birth to “Muslim babies”.
ISIS considered Yazidis “devil worshippers” because of their religious beliefs.
The survivors are still reeling from the horrors inflicted upon them by ISIS – and they want justice.
Germany has managed to convict ISIS fighters of genocide for their crimes against the Yazidis – and meanwhile, probes are also being carried out by the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden.
Britain however – for whatever reason – appears to not be pursuing ISIS fighters for their complicity in the crimes against the Yazidis.
Fawzia’s rescue from Gaza – and her heartbreaking story – shows there are still Yazidis out there who had been snatched from their homes.
It is estimated some 2,700 Yazidis remain missing across the Middle East.
Many families remain desperate that loved ones they lost may one day return to them – just like Fawzia.
Her lawyer Zemfira Dlovani told The Sun: “When she was in Gaza, she didn’t have her kids with her anymore.
“They were taken, she didn’t have control over that any way long time before she left Gaza. They were not with her.
“We don’t talk a lot about her kids. She doesn’t want to talk about that, she is not comfortable.
“It hurt her of course, every mother knows how it feels to not with with their children.
“That was not her choice. It is not an option for them to be reunited.”
Dlovani said Fawzia is grappling with a mix of emotions after so long in captivity.
She said: ” When she came back [to Iraq], she wasn’t feeling well.
“You have to imagine, she came back to the place where she was taken from ten years ago.
“She came back, her father died three months ago and she was very sad about not being able to see him.
“The first week she was feeling good because she was free and could be with her family, but on the other hand, she was also very sad.
“She also doesn’t feel comfortable there still because this is the place she was taken from. And she is still in fear it could happen again. No one feels safe there.Â
“She has hopes to build a new life – but she knows that life will not be in Iraq.”
Dlovani said it will take a long time for Fawzia to recover from her ordeal and process her trauma.
She added: “She was a very strong little girl. She realised very fast, okay if I do what they tell me, I will survive.
“She needs time to rest and time to clarify in her own mind what happened.
“This is only about 15-20 per cent of the whole truth of what she went through.
“She needs lots of time.”
Half of her life a slave of ISIS and Hamas – how can you recover from that? But I know she can.
Alan Duncan
Duncan told The Sun: “I had to say to Fawzia, ‘no promises’ – it was really really hard at times.
“Being ex-forces, I very much understood there were security concerns – we feared it could even be a set up by Hamas as an ambush.
“There was one night in particular – Hamas turned up and threatened her, her and the other girls were taken to hospital, and we feared they would kill her.”
Duncan went on: “But the main thing is she is now free to start living her life. Having dealings with survivors – I understand this is a step-by-step process.
“She is back with her family, back with the Yazidi community – and she can start rebuilding her life.
“Half of her life a slave of ISIS and Hamas – how can you recover from that? But I know she can.”
He added: “The Israelis saw her no different to one of their hostages, they said this was about humanity, and she was just another victim of Hamas – I can’t thank them enough.”
Duncan formerly served with the Queen’s Own Highlanders and Royal Irish Regiment.
He then fought alongside the Kurdish Peshmergas as a sniper to battle against ISIS.
And after the war was over, he decided to use his camera as his new weapon in exposing the depravity of the jihadi cult’s crimes.
His most famous story was the rescue of Naveen Rasho – a Yazidi woman who was held as a slave by ISIS in Syria.
One of Naveen’s captors – an ISIS bride known as Nadine K – has since been jailed in Germany for her role in the genocide.
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