The woman was released by Iraq, the United States and Israel in a secret operation in Gaza.
A Yazidi woman kidnapped by the extreme Islamic terrorist organization Isis in Iraq a decade ago has been freed in an operation in Gaza, the United States, Iraq and Israel say.
The countries released the 21-year-old Fawiza Sidon in a four-month covert operation. Several liberation attempts were made, but the previous ones failed due to the security situation weakened by the war in Gaza, a representative of the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs tells the news agency Reuters.
Sidon’s kidnapper was killed in the war between the terrorist organization Hamas and Israel, probably in an airstrike. After that, Sido fled elsewhere to Gaza.
Iraqi authorities had been in contact with Sidoo for months and passed his information to the United States. The United States and Israel helped him out of Gaza, a Reuters source says. Sido traveled through Israel and Jordan to Iraq to his family.
According to Iraq, Sido is physically in good shape, but traumatized by his imprisonment and the difficult humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Imprisoned when he was only 11 years old
The released person was only 11 years old when Isis, who was at the height of its power at the time, kidnapped him. Isis controlled an area of at most 88,000 square kilometers from eastern Iraq to western Syria and declared an Islamic caliphate there that followed a strict interpretation of Islam.
In August 2014, Isis captured the Sinjar region in northwestern Iraq, where the Yazidi minority lives. Isis killed thousands of Yazidis and kidnapped an estimated 6,000. According to the UN, it was genocide.
According to the Iraqi authorities, more than 3,500 of the prisoners have been released, but around 2,600 people are still missing.
Source: Reuters