French Wife Held Captive by Husband for 12 Years in Pakistan, Rescued

Police in Pakistan have arrested a man who allegedly held his wife and children captive at home for more than a decade.

The wife, a 54‑year‑old French national named Sylvie Yasmina, says the man physically abused her and her children daily and was very violent, she told local police.

One of their sons managed to escape and file a report, which led police to raid the family's house in Bara, a remote town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

When police entered, Yasmina and her five children were found in a cramped, extremely dilapidated room and had bruises all over their bodies.

The family has been taken to a women’s shelter in Peshawar and the police say they will be reunited with their children in France.

Yasmina says the husband had “effectively imprisoned” them since they moved to Pakistan from Australia in 2014.

A senior police officer told BBC Urdu that the wife was not allowed to meet anyone, the two older children missed their studies, and the three younger children were born in Pakistan but never enrolled in school.

The authorities have not identified Yasmina’s husband, a Pakistani national who was “residing illegally” in Australia when the couple met. They married in 2003 and lived in Australia until 2014, when they moved back to Pakistan with the older children. Yasmina says she has had no communication with the outside world since then.

In a statement to police he wrote: “We were deprived of our freedom, my husband didn’t take care of us the way he should as a husband and father. He beats us and puts pressure on our lives daily.”

Yasmina added, “I felt that my future was ruined, the future of the children would also be ruined.”