Ezidi woman returns home after 11 years in ISIS captivity

DUHOK, Iraq/ISTANBUL

An Ezidi woman abducted by the ISIS (Daesh) terrorist group in 2014 was reunited with her family in northern Iraq after spending 11 years in captivity across Iraq and Syria.

Dima Emin Salih, 24, was taken from the village of Kocho in Sinjar district during ISIS’s Aug. 3, 2014 assault on the region, which saw thousands of Ezidis killed, enslaved or displaced.

Speaking to Anadolu after returning to Duhok in the Kurdish Regional Government-controlled north, Salih described her ordeal as “the worst moments of my life.”

-'I was torn away from my family'

Salih was a child when ISIS attacked Kocho, located about 18 kilometers (11 miles) south of the town of Sinjar. During the coordinated assault on the area, militants killed and abducted hundreds of residents. Salih said eight members of her family were taken that night, and the group scattered them across unknown locations.

“I was torn away from my family,” she said. “I experienced the worst moments of my life there. ISIS treated us extremely cruelly. Life there was very bad, and I was subjected to all kinds of torture.”

She said that after a short period in Iraq, she was moved to the Iraq-Syria border. For years, she had no contact with her family, describing her time in captivity as one of daily tears and constant fear.

-'They came and ruined our lives'

“We were just ordinary people living peacefully in our villages. We didn't kill anyone, we didn't harm anyone. But they came with all this cruelty and ruthlessness and ruined our lives,” she said.

Salih said she still cannot understand how “one human being could harm another in such a way.”

Though she has now been rescued and returned home with help from the Kurdish Regional Government’s Office for the Rescue of Abducted Ezidis, not all her family has made it back.

Her father and two brothers remain missing, and their fate is unknown.

“We are still waiting for them, hopefully,” she said.

Her mother, one sister and two other brothers survived, but “we always feel the absence of those who are not with us.”