French woman rescued by police after 12 years of captivity in Pakistan

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

His wife, a French national named Sylvie Yasmina, claims that the man attacked his family physically and mentally "every day" and described him as "very violent", local police said.

One of their sons managed to sneak out to alert authorities, which led to a raid on their home in Bara, a remote town in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Police found Yasmina and her five children in a cramped room in dire conditions, with bruises all over their bodies.

According to police, Yasmina and her children were taken to a women's shelter in Peshawar before being returned to France.

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According to Yasmina, 54, her husband had held the family captive since they moved to Pakistan from Australia in 2014.

"According to the woman... She was not allowed to meet anyone, their two eldest children had missed out on their studies, while the three youngest children were born in Pakistan and were never enrolled in school," a senior police official said.

Authorities have not released the name of Yasmina's husband, but have said he is a Pakistani national who was reportedly in Australia illegally when the couple met.

They married in 2003 and lived in Australia until 2014, when they moved to Pakistan with their two eldest children. Yasmina claims she has had no contact with the outside world since then.

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"We were deprived of our freedom, my husband did not take care of us as he should as a husband and father of my children. He beat us and put pressure on us every day," Yasmina wrote in her statement to the police, parts of which have been published by local media.

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