United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Nobel laureate Nadia Murad in Washington DC why she had received the prize. He made the remark after Murad pleaded with him to help the Yazidis of Iraq escape the clutches of the Islamic State group, AFP reported.

Murad, who escaped from the Islamic State’s control in Iraq and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Peace last year, told Trump how her mother and six brothers were killed and that 3,000 Yazidis remained missing. The US president said: “And you had the Nobel Prize? That’s incredible. They gave it to you for what reason?”

After a pause, Murad repeated her story. “After all this happened to me, I didn’t give up,” she told Trump. “I make it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women. Please do something. It is not about one family.”

Trump also appeared nonplussed when Murad asked him to convince 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. However, later he said: “I know the area very well.”

The United States president had in December 2018 boasted that his administration has defeated the Islamic State group in Syria. “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” he had said.