Yazidi woman freed and reunited with family

CSW has learned that Asya Kemal, a Yazidi woman from northern Iraq who had been held by Islamic State terrorists since 2014, was freed from captivity and reunited with her family last week.

Asya was 16 when she was abducted by IS terrorists. She was found in Turkey and returned to Iraq with the help of the Iraqi authorities.

Human rights organisations estimate the number of Yazidi women still missing since the August 2014 IS invasion to be over 2500, many of whom are believed to be held in different locations in Syria and Turkey.

In 2022, the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC) headed by Baroness Kennedy and Sir Geoffrey Nice issued a report accusing Turkey of being complicit in the Yazidi genocide. The Committee claimed that from April 2014, Turkish officials turned a blind eye to the sale, transfer and enslavement of Yazidi women and children, and helped train fighters affiliated with IS to fight Turkey’s Kurdish opponents in Syria, thus strengthening the perpetrators of the genocide. The report asserted that ‘Turkish officials knew and/or were wilfully blind to evidence that these individuals would use this training to commit prohibited acts against the Yazidis’. The report also noted that similar allegations have been levelled at some Gulf states, including Qatar, but insufficient evidence was produced.

In a case similar to that of Asyma Kemal, a Yazidi woman named Fawzia Amin Sido who was kidnapped aged 11 in Iraq by IS and subsequently taken to Gaza, was rescued on 3 October 2024 after more than a decade in captivity there. Fawzia Amin Sido, now 21, was freed when her captor was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

CSW’s Founder President Mervyn Thomas said: ‘We are delighted that Aysa Kemal and Fawzia Amin Sido are now free and reunited with their families. We call on the international community to step up efforts to find and liberate the women and girls who are still missing, and to hold those responsible for these heinous crimes to account. In particular, we urge the Turkish authorities and the armed groups in northern Syria who are allied to them to cooperate fully with the international coalition to combat IS, to hunt down its sleeper cells in areas under their control, and to block their finances and escape routes.’