Fawzia Amin Sido was just 11 years old when she was captured by ISIS and forced to march from Iraq's Sinjar to Tal Afar. They were starving for days, following which they were given rice and meat.
"We were so hungry, it tasted weird but we just ate," she said. Once they had their meal, the ISIS fighters told them that the meat was from Yazidi babies.
Who is Fawzia Amin Sido?
Fawzia Amin Sido, now 21, was among thousands of Yazidi children and women abducted by ISIS and sold into slavery in August 3, 2014. She recalled the sexual and physical abuse at the hands of a Palestinian ISIS fighter whom she was forced to marry when they were in Raqqa. She was allegedly given drugs that "numb parts of the body" before he forced her to have sex. She gave birth to two children before she turned 15.
She was taken to Al-Hol camp in Syria before being moved to Idlib in 2019 and later to Turkey. In 2020, she was taken to Egypt's Hurghada before crossing over to Gaza.
In Gaza, she stayed in Rafah, where she said her life was "unbearable". She said Hamas constantly harassed her due to her Yazidi origin. Fawzia was moved to different places when the war broke out with Israel, before she she escaped her captor who was reportedly killed in an IDF strike.
Following her rescue, American officials reportedly helped her return to Baghdad to rejoin her family members.
Hamas, however, dismissed the allegations as "a false narrative and a fabricated story." Hamas claimed that Fawzia travelled on her own free will with her mother-in-law to Turkey, Egypt and Gaza before marrying her husband's brother.
The militant group said the Palestinian authority in Gaza accommodated her in "a private room in one of the government facilities” at her request.
Hamas added that IDF did not free her and instead Fawzia got in touch with her family, following which the Jordanian government coordinated with the IDF to get her out.
