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DUHOK, Kurdistan Region – With no news of his daughter, abducted by ISIS, for 16 months, a father feared she was dead until he received a phone call in the middle of the night.
Parwin Ali was released from ISIS captivity by a man known only as Abu Ghanim, buying her freedom for $20,700.
She is one of four Yezidi women held for more than two years by ISIS who have escaped from Mosul and are now being reunited with their families.
“On December 30, three Yezidi women previously held captive by the Islamic State were freed in the Iraqi province of Nineveh. The Lahib tribe is looking after them now. They will reunite with their families in the coming hours,” Falah Hassan, Iraq’s agriculture minister, told Rudaw on Friday.
A fourth woman fled the city and reached the Peshmerga frontline. Preferring to stay anonymous, she told Rudaw that she had been abducted with her sister. Nearly 11 of her family members were kidnapped, including herself. She is the only one to have escaped so far.
According to statistics recorded by Dohuk’s office of the affairs of the kidnapped, over 3,700 Yezidis are still held captive by ISIS, many of whom are women and children.
The head of the office had earlier told Rudaw that they have rescued 2,669 people from ISIS thus far.
Parwin, who was sold on a near monthly basis, was taken from Shingal, to Tal Afar, Mosul, Raqqa, and Aleppo before being brought back to Mosul.
“We will never forget their good deed,” said Parwin’s father of the men who freed his daughter.
He welcomed his daughter home with “great respect.”
“We kneel down before them and will respect them even more than before. She is our daughter. She is from our flesh and blood.”
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