Dream comes true for Iraqi refugee sponsored by the Clooneys

Amal and George Clooney

JEDDAH: A Yazidi refugee’s dream came true last year when Amal and George Clooney facilitated his movement from Iraq to Chicago to receive an education in the US.
The Clooneys for the first time revealed to David Letterman in an interview for his Netflix show, how and why they decided to sponsor Hazim Avdal, 23, after he fled Daesh.
Letterman visits Avdal in Augusta, Kentucky, in an upcoming episode of his Netflix show “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.”
Amal told Letterman that she met Avdal while representing a number of Yazidi refugees in her job as a human rights lawyer.
“I’ve had the privilege of representing a number of Yazidis, who have been the victims of genocide perpetrated by ISIS (Daesh) over the last couple of years; that’s how I met Hazim,” Amal told Letterman.
“When I met him, I remember being so struck by his courage, but also by his amazing spirit, and how he spoke; even after everything he had lost, he spoke about a desire for justice, not revenge.”
She said she and her husband decided to make Avdal’s dream of going to college in the US a reality when he spoke about it one day while they were all in New York.
Avdal, who came to the US last year, is a student at the University of Chicago, and lives in the Clooneys’ home in Augusta, Kentucky, near George’s parents.
The Yazidis are a religious minority in Iraq and Syria. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled the August 2014 massacre in Sinjar by Daesh militants.