French woman, children held captive for 12 years in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa rescued

Islamabad: A French woman and her five children were rescued in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province after her husband kept them captive at home and abused them for more than 10 years, a report has detailed.

The French national, identified as Sylvie Yasmina, has alleged that her husband assaulted them physically and mentally “on a daily basis” and called him “very violent”, BBC Urdu reported, citing police.

One of their sons managed to get out of the house and filed a police report, which led to a raid of their house in Bara, a remote town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Police found Yasmina and her five children in a cramped and “extremely dilapidated room” with wounds all over their bodies. The police said that all six have been taken to a women’s shelter in Peshawar, and they plan to travel back to France.

Yasmina said that her husband had “effectively imprisoned” them since they shifted from Australia to Pakistan in 2014, the BBC reported. A senior police officer said: “According to the woman… She was not allowed to meet anyone; their two older children had missed their studies, while the three younger children were born in Pakistan and never enrolled in school.”

Authorities have not yet identified Yasmina’s husband, a Pakistani national, who they said was illegally living in Australia when the couple met. The couple got married in 2002 and lived in Australia till 2014, when they moved to Pakistan along with their two children. Since then, Yasmina has not had any communication with the outside world.

Earlier in May, the latest statistics by the Police Women and Child Protection Cell revealed that at least 388 adults and 10 minors faced domestic violence, harassment, abuse, and related crimes in Pakistan’s Karachi from January-April this year.

The report showcases how abuse unfolded behind closed doors in Karachi, with domestic violence being the most widely reported issue. Authorities have received 297 complaints about domestic abuse from January to April. Among these, 190 complaints were resolved while nearly 100 cases remain pending, demonstrating delays in providing relief to victims, The Express Tribune reported. Police lodged three formal cases in domestic violence incidents.

IANS