Yazidi Men Freed from ISIS Captivity After Decade-Long Ordeal

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have rescued two Yazidi men, D.R. (22) and O.K. (19), from ISIS captivity after nearly 11 years, marking the second such operation in two weeks, Rudaw reported. The victims, abducted as children during ISIS’s 2014 genocide campaign against the Yazidi community in Shingal, northern Iraq, were reunited with their families in Kurdistan Region camps. Both suffered severe injuries during captivity—D.R. lost a leg and O.K. an arm due to military operations.

O.K. recounted being forcibly renamed, subjected to religious indoctrination, and military training in Syria before surviving a 2024 airstrike that killed his captors. The SDF’s recent operations highlight ongoing efforts to locate 2,590 still-missing Yazidis, per Kurdistan Region data. The UN recognizes ISIS’s atrocities against Yazidis as genocide, with over 6,400 initially abducted and 200,000 displaced.

The rescues underscore ISIS’s lingering threat despite its territorial defeat, while Yazidi families continue to seek justice and repatriation.