‘Help me’: Girl taken hostage 10 years ago saved by TikTok video

The remarkable story of how an ISIS kidnap victim was saved in Gaza all because of a TikTok video has been revealed.

Fawzia Amin Sido was 11 years old when she was violently kidnapped from her village, used as a sex slave and smuggled into Gaza.

Ten years later, a TikTok video has led to her rescue.

The now-21-year-old was freed earlier this month after spending over a decade in captivity, where she was sold, traded, raped and forced into having two children.

She was kidnapped when ISIS overran her Yazidi community in Sinjar, in northern Iraq, in 2014.

Thousands of men were killed in the attack while girls and women were captured and enslaved.

Now, her rescuers have shared how they orchestrated a secret mission to rescue her after she bravely shared a video on TikTok pleading for help.

In the video, shared in September 2023, Ms Sido desperately pleaded for someone to contact Nobel Peace prizewinning Yazidi activist Nadia Murad.

“HELP me,” she said in the video.

“I’m really tired, it’s not just their men, their women and children also harass me … They might assault me, KILL me … it’s really overwhelming.”

Fawzia Amin Seydou was 11 when was kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Picture: Fawzia Amin Seydou’s family

At the time, Ms Sido had already spent nine years in captivity during which she was traded between different ISIS fighters, repeatedly raped and married off to a 24-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, who was a member of Hamas.

“He told me that I had to sleep with him,” Ms Sido later said in an interview with Kurdish TV channel Rudaw.

“On the third day, he went to a pharmacy and bought a drug that numbs part of the body. He gave me the drug and I cried.”

A year later, she gave birth to a boy, before later having a second child, a girl.

In 2018, her husband was killed in fighting between the Islamic State and Kurdish forces.

After his death, Ms Sido was taken to the infamous Al-Hawl camp for ISIS wives in the desert of northeast Syria, The Sunday Times reports.

Her husband’s brother, who was also in ISIS, later arranged to help her and the children flee to the city of Rafah in Gaza by travelling to Turkey, Egypt and finally through tunnels to Gaza in 2020.

The plan worked, with Ms Sido knowing she had no other options. But once in Rafah, her husband’s family became abusive and regularly beat her, leading her to take an overdose and going to hospital.

‘Complex rescue’

Weeks before Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, Ms Sido posted the video on TikTok pleading for help.

The video was picked up by a Kurdish TV channel and was seen by her mother, who assumed her daughter had died long ago.

Leaping into action, she contacted Moroccan-Canadian businessman Steve Maman, who has become known as “the Jewish Schindler” after rescuing 140 Yazidi women and girls from Isis captivity.

Despite his experience, Mr Maman said saving Ms Sido was the “hardest, most complex of any rescue”.

“Like a Holocaust-era kind of thing. The geopolitical situation really complicated things,” he told The Sunday Times.

Mr Maman lobbied the Iraqi government and reached out to the Israeli parliament – which have no diplomatic relations - and persuaded the Iraqi consulate in Jordan to issue a travel document in absentia for Ms Sido using a photo of her taken from one of their Skype chats.

He was also able to provide her with money and a phone.

“You’d think countries might put aside their differences to help a young girl taken at 11 and who’s hurting. But the beautiful thing is that in the end, they did,” Mr Maman told the outlet.

Ms Sido after she was rescued. Picture: Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Senior Israel Defence Forces (IDF) officer, Brigadier-General Elad Goren later heard of Ms Sido’s story and stepped in to help.

“Initially I couldn’t believe it was a real story. If we had an opportunity to help and try to give her a better future, we should do it,” he told The Sunday Times.

His team conjured three possible plance for rescuing Ms Sido. One would see the 21-year-old make her own way to the Kerem Shalom crossing, while another involved IDF soldiers escorting her out.

In the end, they decided on “sending a trusted person we know from Gaza to secretly pick her up”.

In the early hours of October 1, Fawzia was told to be ready in six hours to be picked up by a vehicle and taken on a 90-minute journey to the crossing where an ambulance was waiting for her.

“We sent drones overhead to escort the car from the air and directed its route to make sure they bypassed roads where Hamas and criminals were operating,” Brigadier general Goren told the outlet.

“I’m happy she’s safe and if there are other such cases in Gaza I encourage them to contact us.”

When asked about the thousands of Palestinian women and children being killed in Israeli air strikes, including one which hit a school, the officer replied: “There is a difference between Palestinians and foreigners and between locals and someone sold to Hamas.

“We have evacuated more than 4,000 Palestinians who need medical treatment.”

Reunited after a decade

After her rescue, Ms Sido was taken to Sinjar, Iraq, where she reunited with her mother and brothers.

The Israeli military confirmed she was transported back home after a “complex operation coordinated between Israeli, the United States and other international actors”.

Tragically, Ms Sido’s father had died of a heart attack just two months before the rescue mission.

Mr Maman shared a video on social media showing Ms Sido reuniting with her family.

“I made a promise to Fawzia the Yazidi who was hostage of Hamas in Gaza that I would bring her back home to her mother in Sinjar,” said Mr Maman.

Fawzia Amin Sido, in a video shared on X. Picture: X

She was held captive in Gaza for a decade. Picture: X

“To her it seemed surreal and impossible but not to me, my only enemy was time. Our team reunited her moments ago with her mother and family in Sinjar.”

After a decade in captivity, Ms Sido was finally free, but freedom came at a devastating cost - she had to leave behind her two children.

“She loved those children,” said Mr Maman.

“But they are Hamas children. There’s no way they would have let her take them,” he explained.

“Nor would the Yazidis have accepted her with them.”