Reuters

La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, October 4, 2024, p. 17

Beirut. Fawzia Sido, a 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State fighters in Iraq more than 10 years ago, was freed from Gaza this week in a US-led operation, US and Iraqi officials said.

Israel, Jordan and Iraq also participated in the operation, according to information from officials.

The woman is from the ancient Yazidi religious minority, present mainly in Iraq and Syria, where more than 5,000 members were killed and thousands more were kidnapped in a 2014 campaign that the United Nations described as genocide.

In addition, hundreds of men were massacred there and women and girls were enslaved. Fawzia Sido was one of them.

Months of trying

Sido was released after four months of efforts and several attempts that failed due to the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, said Silwan Sinjaree, chief of staff to the Iraqi foreign minister.

Iraqi officials were in contact with the woman for months and passed her information to US officials, who arranged her departure from Gaza with Israel’s help, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Israeli army maintained yesterday that the young woman’s captor died in the fighting he was fighting with the Palestinian armed group Hamas in the enclave.

Another woman from the Yazidi community is Nadia Murad, who, like thousands of her congregation, was a slave to the jihadists. She is a voice of activism to recognize the genocide suffered by her people and for which she was recognized with the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. She is now an ambassador for the United Nations Organization for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking .