Kidnapped Yezidi woman freed from ISIS captivity in Turkey

A Yezidi family have managed to free their daughter from captivity in Turkey after paying her captors a ransom.

The daughter, Zozan, was kidnapped from the Yezidi heartland of Shengal in Iraq by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014. Zozan was recently discovered to be in Turkey with her captor and his family. The ISIS family have reportedly been living in Turkey for several years.

According to several Turkish media outlets, the now 24-year-old Zozan was taken to Turkey after another ISIS member sold her via the internet to her most recent captor.

During her four-year kidnapping, which ended in Ankara, Zozan was subjected to numerous forms of torture and violence by ISIS members who burned her body by cigarettes. Signs of sexual abuse and malnutrition were also present. Zozan was held in a house inhabited by the ISIS member’s two wives and four children.

Zozan’s family, who survived the ISIS attack on Shengal, was able to discover her location after seeing her photos on an internet slave market. The family then managed to purchase her freedom.

Turkish authorities have done little to combat trafficked women and children within the country.

ISIS terrorists committed massacres in Shengal and Khabur regions — in Iraq and Syria respectively — in 2014 and 2015, killing thousands of men and kidnapping thousands of girls and women in a campaign that international governments and organization and states around the world have described as genocide. The sixth anniversary of the Yezidi genocide in Shengal was on 3 August 2020.

Statement by the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for #Iraq (SRSG) Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert on the 6th Anniversary of the genocidal campaign against the #Yazidi Minority (3 August 2020) pic.twitter.com/WrooiECI3x

— UNAMI (@UNIraq) August 3, 2020