On June 3, Nadia Murad, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Yazidi activist, revealed that six Yazidi women who were taken captive by ISIS had been rescued from Syria.
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“After weeks of investigation, I am extremely heartened to report that we have rescued six more Yazidi women who were taken captive by ISIS. The women were still children and teenagers when they were first taken captive in 2014. Trafficked out of Iraq and onto Syria, they were rescued on Saturday morning,” she said in a statement, which explained that the women had “been flown back to Erbil [the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan] where they will be reunited with their families, and offered all the psychosocial support they need.”
Only one woman, Samia Samu, has been identified. Her husband, Dakhil Hassan, welcomed her with cheers and sweets, and celebrated her freedom upon her arrival. Hassan, who is also a survivor of the Yazidi genocide, celebrated their “eternal love in the time of genocide.”
The couple celebrated by renewing their wedding vows, as they begin a new life together — after some nine years apart.
A fateful visit
“It was a long and painful wait, but there was no other choice. I had a strong feeling that she would return one day,” Hassan told Daraj. He recalled the first time he saw Samu, around 2010, saying “it was the most beautiful moment in my life.” The couple married in late 2013.
An estimated 2,693 Yazidis are still in captivity.
Shortly after, in 2014, ISIS militants began their attack on Yazidi areas in the Sinjar region in northern Iraq. At the time, Samu was visiting her parents in another village. “ISIS invaded the village, and I lost my wife for 9 years,” Hassan said.
There and across the region, ISIS militants destroyed villages and religious sites, lined men up and shot them, kidnapped thousands of women and children and traded them in modern day chattel slavery. According to the Yazidi Kidnapping Liberation Office, more than 6,417 Yazidis were kidnapped including 3,548 women. More than 3,560 people have been freed, and 2,693 were still in captivity.
The Genocide of Yazidis has been officially recognized by several bodies of the UN and the European Parliament.
Searching for Samia
Hassan described his search for his wife as “long and arduous.”
“When Samia was kidnapped along with thousands of Yazidi women, I didn’t know what to do. There were few solutions and communication was missing,” he said.
That was my punishment for my attempt to escape.
Hassan followed all news about the liberation of the abducted Yazidis, hoping that his wife would be among them. His wife was not among those freed, but he was confident that she would be free one day. He kept searching till he found that she was in Syria with IS militants. He tried to communicate with the militants to free his wife, but his attempts were unsuccessful.
Samu cried when she remembered the past nine years of abduction. “I want to erase those years at any cost,” she said. “There were beatings and rape. That was my punishment for my attempt to escape.”
After their abduction, the women were taken to Mosul, the ISIS stronghold in Iraq. They spent a few months there before being taken to Syria.
“I was sold along with the Yazidi women to members of the terrorist organization,” she recalled. One day she managed to flee and enter a house in the Raqqa province, an ISIS stronghold in Syria, but the people there supported ISIS and returned her to them, she said. She was beaten and raped for trying to flee.
Her last stop was in the Syrian town of Shaafah, in Deir ez-Zor province. There, she was among kidnapped women who were freed in return for a ransom paid by Nadia Murad Initiative. The women were then transferred to Turkey then to Iraq, she said.
A new beginning
Hassan said that the vow renewal was “important, because it affirms our love. It is necessary for us to renew the vows of love that brought us together.”
Samu agreed: “I am very happy with the great reception that reflects the great love that Dakhil has for me. It makes me feel comfortable after what I went through during nine years of captivity.”
Family members and friends attended the wedding to celebrate Samu’s return home.
