A Yazidi woman who survived rape and enslavement by Islamic State and was rescued from Gaza last October in a U.S.-led operation arrived in Germany on Tuesday, February 18.
Fawzia Amin Saydo, 21, was kidnapped by IS militants from her hometown of Sinjar, northern Iraq, in August 2014, just a month before her 11th birthday. She endured a decade of suffering, including rape, enslavement and forced marriage to a Palestinian IS fighter in Syria before being sent to Gaza to live with her captor’s mother.
She was rescued from Gaza on October 1, 2024, during a secret U.S.-led operation that involved cooperation among human rights activists, as well as Israeli, Jordanian, Iraqi and United Nations officials.
Saydo arrived about 5 p.m. local time at Hannover Airport in Langenhagen, Germany, where she was received by her lawyer, Kareba Hagemann, a group of relatives and human rights activists.
“She has arrived in Germany safely, and she is very relieved,” Hagemann told VOA. “The first thing Fawzia said upon her arrival was, ‘Please make sure my family can also come join me and live here with me.'”
The German consulate in Baghdad on February 10 issued Saydo a visa on a humanitarian basis. Her mother, grandmother and five siblings are still in Iraq.
“Her family, except her two sisters, wanted to go as well, but the German government made it clear that they will only agree to take in Fawzia,” Hagemann said. “There is no legal obligation to take her, but it is an act of humanity, which is why I was thankful to them to agree to take Fawzia at least.”
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, Germany is the third-largest refugee-hosting country in the world and the largest in the European Union, with 2.5 million refugees from all over the world, including more than 1 million refugees from Ukraine.
Since the 2014 Yazidi genocide carried out by Islamic State in northern Iraq, the number of Yazidi asylum-seekers in Germany has risen to more than 200,000.
The ongoing debate within German society about deporting refugees, however, has put many asylum-seekers from the religious minority at risk of deportation. This is particularly due to some politicians arguing that the defeat of IS in 2017 has ended group-specific persecution in Iraq — a claim contested by human rights organizations.
On Monday, German authorities announced the deportation of 47 Iraqis whose asylum applications had been denied. Among the more than 300,000 Iraqi refugees and migrants living in Germany, refugee organizations estimate that nearly 700 Iraqis were deported in 2024 alone, with about 10,000 currently facing the risk of deportation.
Hagemann, who is also a Yazidi, told VOA the uncertainty has taken a psychological toll on many Yazidi asylum-seekers who fled Iraq due to persecution. While the exact number of deported Yazidis remains unclear, she estimated that at least five have been sent back to Iraq and the Kurdistan region.
“Those Yazidis want to build their new life and integrate, even though some of them find it hard to learn a new language because of their trauma,” Hagemann said. “Unfortunately, most of them are not as lucky as Fawzia to be supported, and [they] decide to come to Germany illegally, where they face deportation and have been held in captivity for years.”
In January 2023, the German Bundestag [parliament] passed a resolution that recognized Islamic State’s crimes against Yazidis as genocide. Since then, the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein have enacted laws to protect Yazidi asylum-seekers from deportation.
Hagemann argued that allowing Yazidi survivors, particularly those who have been victims of rape, to remain in Germany would provide them with a chance to heal — an opportunity, she said, they cannot find in Iraq.
“We have been able to schedule a therapy session for Fawzia on Thursday, just two days after her arrival in Germany, to enable her start a self-determining life again,” Hagemann said.
Rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have reported that Yazidi survivors do not get adequate psychological support upon their return to Iraq.
Activists from the Montreal-based Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI), who assisted Saydo in relocating to Germany, stated that her return from Gaza to Iraq only marked a minor improvement in her life, as she continued to endure neglect and targeting from militants in her hometown of Sinjar.
“She kept saying, ‘I have been brought from one hell to another,'” said human rights activist and CYCI member Dawood Jajju, describing Saydo’s dire situation in Iraq.
Activists say Saydo and her family were threatened by Iraqi militants three weeks after her return to Sinjar after she appeared in a news article in which she praised Israel for its role in taking her out of Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Iraqi officials tasked to work on her case were not available to comment.
Steve Maman, founder of CYCI, told VOA that Saydo was summoned several times by Iraqi authorities “who mistakenly believe she is a Zionist and an Israeli-trained agent.”
“Fawzia did not receive any therapy at all. The country has not made any effort or gesture to help her. It seems that Yazidis are second-class citizens in their own country,” Maman said.
When Islamic State attacked the Sinjar region in 2014, the group killed nearly 10,000 Yazidis and enslaved more than 6,000 of women and children.
Data from the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Region show that some 3,500 Yazidis have been rescued or freed, with some 2,600 still missing.
