Israel, the US and other international actors involved • Hamas: “Found”
The operation was coordinated between Israel, the United States and other international actors. On Thursday, the Israeli Defense Force, the IDF, was able to announce that 21-year-old Fawzia Amin Sido is a free woman.
It reports CNN.
She was one of thousands of Yazidi women and children captured in August 2014 by ISIS when they captured the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq. During the invasion, Yazidi men and boys were executed and the women were subjected to gross sexual violence.
Fawzia Amin Sido was only eleven years old.
Turkey, Egypt and Gaza
In the following years, Fawzia Amin Sido was exposed to human trafficking and was often moved between different places and countries.
“We ended up in the Al-Hol camp in Syria before being smuggled to Idlib in 2019, and from there we went to Turkey. In 2020 they arranged a passport for me in Turkey so I could fly from Istanbul to Hurghada in Egypt and then to Gaza,” she told CNN.
Then she remained for a while in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip – a year which she describes as “unbearable”.
“Hamas constantly harassed me because of my Yazidi background and I was not allowed to have any contact with my family,” she says.
Hamas: “Found”
When the war between Hamas and Israel broke out on October 7, 2023, she was moved around between different locations in Gaza, until October 1 this year. Then the IDF believes that her captors were killed in an attack carried out by them and that she was then able to escape.
“After that, American officials took me back to Baghdad,” Fawzia Amin Sido told CNN.
Hamas says in a statement that the IDF has “made up the story of the Yazidi girl in the Gaza Strip” and that it is not true that the IDF freed her.
They also allege that Fawzia Amin Sido married a “Palestinian young man” who died in wartime Syria and then voluntarily traveled to Turkey, Egypt and Gaza before marrying her dead husband’s brother.