DUHOK, Kurdistan Region - As soon as the Champions League final match between Real Madrid and Liverpool came to an end last week, Wajdi Zedan left a cafeteria at the Sharya Camp where he had gone to watch it with friends. While returning home at around 1 am, three unidentified people attacked him, cutting off his ears after severely beating him up for reasons he still does not understand.
A week into the incident, the perpetrators have remained at large. Zedan, 18, says he was beaten unconscious in the early hours of May 29. When he woke up, he saw blood had covered his entire body and realized his ears were gone.
"Somebody beat me up from behind and then they became three people. Then I fell. I heard their voices, but I did not recognize them and did not even see their faces because it was night," Zedan told Rudaw on Saturday, recounting the horror he went through.
"When I regained consciousness, I saw my entire body had been covered with blood. I took out my mobile and took a selfie. I saw my ears were cut off. I was scared of my face," he said.
Zedan is from the town of Sipai Sheikh Khidhir, in the district of Shingal. He has been living at the Sharya camp along with his family since 2014, when Islamic State (ISIS) militants overran their homeland, brutally murdering and enslaving thousands of his community.
Two hours after the incident, police forces arrived at the scene, finding only one of his ears. Jalal Ali, Zedan's uncle, says they took the piece of the ear to his doctors, but they were disappointed to learn that it could not be joined back to his head in any surgeries.
His family have lodged a lawsuit against the unknown perpetrators. Under the command of Ali Tatar, the governor, a probe into the incident has been launched.
"No one has been apprehended as of yet in relation to this incident. Investigations have already been done with a number of [suspects] but the perpetrators have not yet been identified," Hemin Sulaiman, spokesperson for Duhok Police, said.
Sulaimani went on to add that, "God willing... the identity of those who have done this will be revealed and they will face justice and receive the harshest kind of punishment."
Sharya camp is home to displaced Yazidis who fled Shingal from ISIS. According to UNHCR Iraq, there are currently 135,703 individuals, mainly Yazidis, in 15 camps in Duhok and Nineveh governorates, as well around 195,000 further IDPs living independently in the area, 90 percent of whom are Yazidis, placing the total number of displaced Yazidis in the Kurdistan Region at around 300,000.
