ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — After six years of separation, a Yezidi woman held in an Erbil prison after Islamic State (ISIS) captivity was reunited with her family on Sunday.
Hela Mahlo, 23, from Gir Ozer in Shingal was one of thousands of Yezidi women taken captive by ISIS militants in August 2014 when the terror group overran the area, launching a genocide against the small ethnoreligious community.
"I am starting a new life and want to forget the past misery," Mahlo told Rudaw on Sunday. "All I want is to live with my family."
In 2019, she was arrested by Kurdish security forces in Kirkuk and held for one year and seven months in an Erbil prison. Authorities say they did not know she was Yezidi.
“She had denied that she was even a Yezidi in the beginning and had not given her real name," said Khairi Bozani, the Yezidi representative for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Religious Affairs.
"Therefore, no one from the security authorities even knew that she was a Yezidi woman because she only knew Arabic," he told Rudaw's Shayan Tahseen.
"I did not remember anything about my family. After I was arrested by the [KRG], I slowly started to recover my memory," Mahlo said.
Mahlo’s case rose to prominence last week after the family of Kurdish hostage held by ISIS said he would be released in exchange for Mahlo, who like many other Yezidi captives, was said to be married to an ISIS militant.
Kurdish authorities have consistently said they do not negotiate with terrorists and that no prisoner exchange has taken place between the Region and ISIS or any other similar extremist group.
Before Mahlo was released, the family of the Kurdish policeman had urged the KRG to accept ISIS’ terms, which they hoped would save the life of their son.
"I want Jalal back," Baban’s distraught mother told Rudaw last week.
Mahlo’s brother Dakhil said their family is “thrilled” about her release.
"Yezidi or Muslim, whoever made us happy and released this girl to us, we are thankful for them," he said on Sunday.
Mahlo later visited the Yezidi holy site of Lalish to meet with spiritual leaders.
Now that she has reunited with her mother and brother, they hope they will soon reunite with their missing father and three brothers.
According to data from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, 2,885 Yezidis remain missing. Bozani believes "many of them are at al-Hol Camp and others are still in areas that ISIS had once ruled."
Many Yezidis are afraid to reveal their identity for fear of being harmed by ISIS families.
"We cannot say they are missing, but that we cannot find them and they exist. Many of them have Hela's problem. They are brainwashed, so they do not dare reveal their identity or are threatened by their captors that if they return to us, their families may not accept them or kill them."
ISIS first swept across Iraq in 2014, capturing cities across northern and central Iraq including Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and the capital of Nineveh province. At the height of its power, ISIS controlled an area equivalent in size to the United Kingdom. During their occupation of Iraq and Syria, ISIS subjected as many ten million people to an extreme and violent interpretation of Islam.
Although Baghdad declared the territorial defeat of the group in Iraq in December 2017, its remnants have since reverted to insurgency tactics; ambushing security forces, kidnapping and executing suspected informants, and extorting money from vulnerable rural populations.
Translation by Zhelwan Z. Wali
