A Yazidi woman who was kidnapped by Islamist terrorists aged 11 has given a harrowing account of her years in captivity and the brutality she faced as a sex slave at the hands of ISIS before being trafficked to Gaza.
Fawzia Amin Saydo, now aged 21, was snatched from her home in Sinjar, Iraq, along with dozens of other children and women, whose babies she said were slaughtered by the terrorists.
The group were starved for four days before being handed plates of meat and rice, Fawzia said. Desperate for food, they consumed what was on the table, but soon began to have stomach ache and feel sick.
‘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.’
She told The Sun that the ruthless terrorists taunted the group with pictures of beheaded kids and babies, allegedly telling them: ‘These are the kids you ate.’
One of the women is said to have recognised her own baby from the pictures by its hand, Fawzia is said to have recalled in her horrifying testimony.
Fawzia Amin Saydo, now aged 21, was snatched from her home in Sinjar, Iraq, as a child in 2014
Fawzia Amin Sido is seen in a picture shared by Iraqi authorities after she was returned home
Video has been shared which appears to show Fawzia being reunited with her family after her escape
File image taken from a propaganda video released on March 17, 2014 by Islamic State
Taken from her family in 2014, Fawzia went on to endure a decade in captivity, first being bought and sold as a slave in Syria.
As a 12-year-old in 2015, she was forced into marriage with a 24-year-old Palestinian ISIS supporter, according to Israeli media. Living in Raqqa, the child bride gave birth to two children, a boy and a girl.
In 2019, her husband was reportedly killed during Islamic State’s last stand in the Euphrates River Valley.
Fawzia and her children were sent with other families to the Al-Hawl camp in northern Syria, a site which held some 10,000 people at the time and which had notoriously grim conditions.
From there, with the help of IS, she was smuggled into Turkey to be under the ‘protection’ of her dead husband’s family, who are then believed to have sent her via Egypt into Gaza in 2020.
Fawzia said she was subjected to horrific treatment by her husband’s family, who she said regularly beat her and restricted her freedom.
She also told The Sun that she had been treated as a ‘sabaya’ – or slave – by Hamas.
During this period, she became separated from her two young children, according to her German lawyer Zemfira Dlovani, who said they were ‘taken’ from their mother.
Steve Maman shared a picture of himself speaking to Fawzia after he said he was involved in her rescue
‘It hurt her of course, every mother knows how it feels to not be with with their children. That was not her choice. It is not an option for them to be reunited,’ Dlovani said.
Other reports have suggested that Fawzia’s children were also trafficked to Gaza, but had to be left behind by their mother in her desperate attempt to escape, knowing that they would not be accepted into the Yazidi community as the product of rape.
In August 2023, after almost ten years of suffering away from her family, Fawzia managed to get help through a plea on the internet.
In an emotional TikTok video, in which she wore a hijab and covered part of her face with a crying emoji, she reportedly 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.’
She got in contact with a lawyer and other intermediaries, who helped to organise an operation to extract her from Gaza.
Led by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and Cogat, the Israeli agency that works in Gaza and the West Bank, it involved meticulous planning.
A fully veiled woman holds her baby as civilians fleeing the Islamic State’s group embattled holdout of Baghouz walk in a field on February 13, 2019
On October 1, Fawzia finally received the phone call she had been waiting for – telling her that help was on the way.
She was instructed to flee to a hideout to be picked up by a vehicle which was sent to bring her out.
‘The young girl was extracted from the Gaza Strip in recent days in a secret operation through the Kerem Shalom crossing,’ the IDF said in a statement earlier this month.
‘After crossing into Israel, she was taken to Jordan via the Allenby Crossing and then on to her family in Iraq.’
Canadian Jewish philanthropist Steve Maman, dubbed by some as the ‘Jewish Schindler’ due to his efforts to rescue Yazidis from ISIS captivity, said he was among those who helped to organise the incredible feat.
Maman shared a heartwarming video after news of her rescue broke, which he said showed Fawzia reuniting with her family shortly after the news broke that she was finally free.
The young woman is seen hugging loved ones after reportedly spending a decade in captivity
Canadian Jewish philanthropist Steve Maman shared a heartwarming video which he said showed Fawzia reuniting with her family
‘I made a promise to Fawzia the Yazidi who was hostage of Hamas in Gaza that I would bring her back home to her mother in Sinjar,’ Maman wrote on X.
‘To her, it seemed surreal and impossible but not to me, my only enemy was time. Our team reunited her moments ago with her mother and family in Sinjar.’
Fawzia’s rescue is said to have been achieved after several failed attempts, as well as years of diplomatic discussions and planning.
After her rescue was confirmed, Hamas released a statement claiming Fawzia had been willingly living in Gaza – and only wanted to leave because of the war.
She hit back labelling this ‘a lie’, and said she is now happy and can ‘breathe again’ at last.
More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by IS from Sinjar region in Iraq in 2014, with many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers and taken across borders, including to Turkey and Syria.
Over the years, more than 3,500 have been rescued or freed, according to Iraqi authorities, with some 2,600 still missing.
Many are feared dead but Yazidi activists say they believe hundreds are still alive.
