Turkish police rely on ISIS suspect to reveal ID of captive child
Turkish police rely on an ISIS suspect detained on Feb. 24 to identify a seven-year-old Yazidi girl he held in captivity prior to his detention. Known to be an Iraqi citizen, the seven-year-old girl is still in the custody of the Family, Labor and Social Services Ministry.
Hale Gönültaş / DUVAR
Turkish police rely on an ISIS suspect who took a Yazidi child captive to identify the minor, as the local community has failed to produce any clues as to her family since her rescue in Ankara on Feb. 24.
Known to be an Iraqi citizen, the seven-year-old girl is still in the custody of the Family, Labor and Social Services Ministry as two attorneys hired by the Yazidi community continue to look for her family.
The two attorneys planned on petitioning the Justice Ministry to speak with the Yazidi girl on March 1, attorney Ayşe Özdemir said, as well as officials from the Family, Labor and Social Services Ministry.
"We will try to speak with officials from both the ministry and the facility where the child is being held, to observe more closely her mental and physical state. We want to meet with her with a child counselor present," Özdemir said.
"Kidnapped from Iraq as a war trophy," the police report about the child's rescue said about her, an expression often used for the women and children taken by ISIS in the massacre of thousands of Yazidis in Sinjar in 2014.
The use of the phrase "war trophy" indicates to experts that the child's family was not associated with ISIS, Özdemir said, while the child's possible connection to the Sinjar Massacre could mean that her family is no longer alive.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) prompted Family, Labor and Social Services Minister Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk to move along with efforts to find the child's family, and the local Yazidi community sent footage of the girl's rescue to the Iraqi Research Commission for Missing Yazidis.
Meanwhile, the Yazidi Cultural Foundation has voiced willingness to take custody of the child, as finding the families of war survivors is often a long and arduous process.