Maman told the Jerusalem Post that Sido escaped from her Palestinian captor's family in late 2023 after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike. She then sought refuge in a safe house within "walking distance" of IDF forces, but spent a month waiting for permission to leave Gaza, he told the newspaper.

U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told a news briefing the woman had initially been kidnapped by the Islamic State in Iraq when she was 11 years-old.