ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – For decades rumors have circulated that more than a dozen Kurdish women, captured in ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s brutal Anfal Campaign against the Kurds, had been kidnapped and sold in Egypt by the former regime.

Now, Kurdish businessman Rushdi Saeed says there are 40 such women living in Egypt -- not 18 as previously thought -- and that he has video accounts of some of them telling their tales.

“Some of these women are now married and have children,” he told Rudaw. “And some of them live in villages and live on handouts from people.”

“In the video these women speak about their families,” said Saeed. “Some of them also speak about how many of their family members were killed in the campaign.”

Saeed said it took him years of work and more than 30 teams of investigators to find the women.

He managed to interview six of them on video, and has given the evidence to the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Anfal and Martyrs.

Saeed said that four of the victims are Faili Kurds, one is from Khanaqin and another is from Kalar, towns located in an area of Kurdistan that was hardest hit under Saddam’s anti-Kurdish campaign in 1987-1988. Tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers were taken captive and executed in Iraq’s southern deserts.

Saeed said that due to the political turmoil in Egypt in recent years it was not easy to follow the trail of the Kurdish women. But someone he met who knew some of the women finally helped him solve the case.

At a press conference last week Aram Ahmad, the Kurdistan Region’s minister of Anfal and Martyrs, confirmed he had received the videos of six Kurdish women in Egypt. But he added that none of the 18 women registered in the ministry’s files is among the women in the videos.

Ahmad said that the women tell stories of imprisonment and torture in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities before ending up in Egypt. He said that based on the dates the women say they were captured, such as 1983 and 1989, some of them may have been captured before or after the Anfal campaign.

Ahmad said that the videos do not confirm the long-believed notion that the Kurdish women had been sold to nightclubs by Iraqi intelligence officials.

“The women say that they have worked in menial jobs in Egypt, but none of them says anything about working in nightclubs,” Ahmad told Rudaw.

Relatives of the missing women in Kurdistan have seen the videos, according to Ahmad, but none of the women in the interviews was identified.

“Taking into account the women’s current circumstances and choice, as to whether they want to return to Kurdistan or not, we will try to solve this issue,” Ahmad said.

RUDAW