A Yazidi woman who was kidnapped by Islamist terrorists when she was 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 21, was kidnapped from her home in Sinjar, Iraq, along with dozens of other children and women, whose babies she claims were massacred by terrorists.
The group starved for four days before receiving plates of meat and rice, Fawzia said. Desperate for food, they consumed what was on the table, but soon began to have stomach pains and feel sick.
“When we finished, they told us the meat was from the babies,” Fawzia said. “There was a woman who had a heart attack and died at that time.”
she said the sun that the ruthless terrorists taunted the group with photographs of decapitated children and babies, supposedly telling them: ‘These are the children you ate.’
One of the women is said to have recognized her own baby from the photographs by the hand, Fawzia is said to have recalled in her horrifying testimony.
Fawzia Amin Saydo, now 21, was kidnapped from her home in Sinjar, Iraq, as a child in 2014.
Fawzia Amin Sido appears in an image shared by Iraqi authorities after her return home.
A video has been shared that appears to show Fawzia reuniting with her family after her escape.
File image taken from a propaganda video released on March 17, 2014 by Islamic State.
Separated from her family in 2014, Fawzia spent a decade in captivity, first being bought and sold into slavery in Syria.
In 2015, when she was 12, she was forced to marry a 24-year-old Palestinian, an 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 the Islamic State’s last stand in the Euphrates River Valley.
Fawzia and her children were sent with other families to Al-Hawl camp in northern Syria, a place that was home to around 10,000 people at the time and had notoriously bleak conditions.
From there, with the help of IS, she was smuggled into Turkey to be under the “protection” of her late husband’s family, who are believed to have sent her through Egypt to 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 Hamas had treated her like a ‘sabaya’ (or slave).
During this period, she was separated from her two young children, according to her German lawyer Zemfira Dlovani, who said they were “separated” from their mother.
Steve Maman shared a photo of himself talking to Fawzia after telling her he was involved in her rescue.
“It hurt her, of course, every mother knows what it feels like to not be with her children.” That was not his choice. It’s not an option for them to meet,” Dlovani said.
Other reports have suggested that Fawzia’s children were also trafficked to Gaza, but her mother had to leave them behind in her desperate attempt to escape, knowing that they would not be accepted in the Yazidi community as a product of rape.
In August 2023, after almost ten years of suffering away from her family, Fawzia managed to get help through an online plea.
In an emotional TikTok video, in which she wore a hijab and covered part of her face with a crying emoji, she allegedly said: “I hope they can rescue me from this place… If someone comes and enters Palestine, regardless the location, I will go to them.’
She contacted a lawyer and other intermediaries, who helped organize an operation to get her out of Gaza.
Led by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Cogat, the Israeli agency working in Gaza and the West Bank, it involved meticulous planning.
A fully veiled woman holds her baby as civilians fleeing the Islamic State group in Baghouz walk through 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.
They ordered her to flee to a hiding place to be picked up by a vehicle that was sent to take her out.
“The young woman was extracted from the Gaza Strip in recent days in a secret operation through the Kerem Shalom crossing,” the Israeli military said in a statement earlier this month.
“After crossing into Israel, she was taken to Jordan through the Allenby crossing and then to her family in Iraq.”
Canadian Jewish philanthropist Steve Maman, dubbed by some as the ‘Jewish Schindler’ because of his efforts to rescue Yazidis from ISIS captivity, said he was among those who helped organize this incredible feat.
Maman shared a heartwarming video after news of her rescue broke, which she said showed Fawzia reuniting with her family shortly after news broke that she was finally free.
The young woman is seen hugging her loved ones after spending a decade in captivity.
Canadian Jewish philanthropist Steve Maman shared a touching video that he said showed Fawzia reuniting with her family.
“I promised Fawzia, the Yazidi who was a Hamas hostage in Gaza, that I would take her back home to her mother in Sinjar,” Maman wrote in 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 issued a statement stating that Fawzia had been voluntarily living in Gaza and only wanted to leave because of the war.
She responded by labeling this “a lie” and said she is happy now and can finally “breathe again.”
More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by IS in the Sinjar region of Iraq in 2014, and many of them were sold as sex slaves 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, and about 2,600 remain missing.
Many are feared dead, but Yazidi activists say they believe hundreds are still alive.