Nobel Peace Prize winning human rights activist Nadia Murad shared her harrowing story of escape from the clutches of ISIS with Donald Trump in the White House this week, but things quickly took an awkward turn when the president asked her where her family was - despite having just been told twice that they’d been murdered by the Islamic State.

During her moving monologue on Wednesday, Murad stood beside a seated Trump urging him to help her Yazidi community return home to Iraq by intervening in the conflict between Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting over the land left behind in ISIS’ collapse.

Murad told Trump of the day ISIS attacked her village, killing her mother and all of her brothers, before taking her and the other women in her family as prisoners.

‘Now there’s no ISIS, but we cannot go back [home] because the Kurdish government and the Iraqi government, they are fighting each other [over] who will control my area,’ Murad told the president. ‘They killed my mom, my six brothers.’

Cutting her off mid-sentence, Trump interjects, asking, ‘Where are they now?’

Nobel Peace Prize winning human rights activist Nadia Murad shared her harrowing story of escape from the clutches of ISIS with Donald Trump in the White House this week, but things quickly took an awkward turn when the seemingly confused – or disinterested - president asked her where her family was, despite having just been told twice that they’d been murdered by the Islamic State

Taken aback by the question, Murad blinks and pauses for a moment, before clarifying, ‘They killed them. They are in the mass graves in Sinjar and I’m fighting just to live. Please do something.’

Trump, who has boasted of crushing the self-styled caliphate of the Islamic State group that once stretched across Iraq and Syria, appeared at a loss when Murad asked him to press the Iraqi and Kurdish governments to create safe conditions for the Yazidis to return.

'But ISIS is gone and now it's Kurdish and who?" Trump asked, before later telling her, ‘I know the area you’re talking about very well.'

Murad - persevering through having to talk mostly to the back of the president’s head after his attention seemingly waned - told Trump on the day ISIS attacked her village, killing her mother and all of her brothers, before taking her and the other women in her family as prisoners

Murad was one of 27 survivors of religious persecution who met with Trump at the White House on Wednesday in a promotion of an international effort to protect religious freedoms.

Plight of the Yazidi under ISIS The Yazidis are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. The group's beliefs were seen as heretical by the twisted butchers of the Islamic State. ISIS overran the Yazidi faith's heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014. Men and older women were massacred, while younger women and girls were forced into sex slavery or 'married' to ISIS fighters. Thousands of Yazidi women were raped and tortured by their captors. The attacks by ISIS on the Yazidis were condemned as genocide by the United Nations. As ISIS's grip on Iraq was lost earlier this year, the jihadis decapitated dozens of Yazidi women and dumped the heads in dustbins, according to British SAS troops who entered recaptured territory. Advertisement

Other speakers included a Jewish Holocaust survivor, a Tibetan from China and a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar.

Similarly to thousands of other Yazidi women, Murad was brutally raped and beaten by ISIS’ terrorist soldiers before she managed to escape to Germany where she now lives.

In 2018, she became the first woman from Iraq to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism in speaking out against abuse and sexual violence. Murad now travels around the world speaking of how sex trafficking is used as a weapon during wars.

And as she backed away from the president, he told her he was going to look into the Kurdish and Iraqi conflict ‘very strongly’, before questioning her on her Nobel Prize win.

‘So they gave you the Nobel Prize? That’s incredible,’ He told her. ‘They gave it to you for what reason?’

A bemused Murad responds, ‘For what reason? After all that has happened to me, I didn’t give up. I make it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women.’

Similarly to thousands of other Yazidi women, Murad was brutally raped and between by ISIS’ terrorist soldiers before she managed to escape to Germany where she now lives. She became the first woman from Iraq to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism in speaking out against abuse and sexual violence

‘So they gave you the Nobel Prize? That’s incredible,’ Trump told her. ‘They gave it to you for what reason?’ A bemused Murad responds, ‘For what reason? After all that has happened to me, I didn’t give up. I make it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women.’

Murad added that she was the first woman to escape ISIS and publicly speak out about the horrors she faced during her time in captivity.

‘Oh really? It’s the first time,’ and upbeat Trump responds. ‘So you escaped?’

Murad retorted that though she may have escaped ISIS, she is still not free.

‘If I cannot go to my home and live in a safe place and get my dignity back, this is not about ISIS,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘It’s about I’m in danger. My people cannot go back.’

Murad added that she was the first woman to escape ISIS and publicly speak out about the horrors she faced during her time in captivity. ‘Oh really? It’s the first time,’ and upbeat Trump responds. ‘So you escaped?’

Within the same meeting the president also seemed bewildered when a Rohingya refugee, Mohib Ullah, told him of the violence he’d fled in Myanmar and that his people wanted to ‘go back home as quickly as possible’ to western Myanmar, asking the president to help them.

‘And where is that, exactly?’ Trump quizzed.

‘Bangladesh refugee camp,’ Ullah answered, referencing where thousands of Rohingya had fled to escape persecution from Myanmar security forces.

Former Republican governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback, interjected, pointing out to the president ‘That is right next to Burma.’

‘I see,’ Trump said.