DOUMA, Syria (news agencies) — Protesters in Syria held a sit-in Wednesday demanding justice for four activists who were forcibly disappeared in 2013 and whose fate remains one of the most haunting mysteries of the country’s 13-year civil war.
On Dec. 9, 2013, gunmen stormed the Violation Documentation Center in Douma, northeast of Damascus, and took Razan Zaitouneh, her husband Wael Hamadeh, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi.
Outspoken and defiantly secular, Zaitouneh was one of Syria’s most well-known human rights activists. Perhaps most dangerously, she was impartial. She chanted in protests against then-President Bashar Assad but was also unflinching in documenting abuses by rebels fighting to oust him.
There has been no sign of life nor proof of death since she and her colleagues were abducted.
Since the ouster of Assad on Dec. 8, protests have erupted across Syria demanding information about thousands of people who were forcibly disappeared under his rule. The new leadership under the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which orchestrated the offensive to oust Assad, has maintained a neutral stance regarding accusations against various armed groups for forcibly disappearing activists. At the same time, HTS has aligned with activists in their efforts to uncover the truth and seek justice.
“We are gathering here to remind the world of their case,” Yassin Haj Saleh, Khalil’s husband, said Wednesday, adding that the disappearance of activists represents “the deepest wounds” of Syria’s conflict. “This is the first opportunity that allows us to be in Douma, and in front of the place that they were kidnapped from, to speak up about the case, taking advantage of the political change that took place in the country.”
Saleh said they had repeatedly appealed to various armed groups for cooperation in finding the four activists in the years before Assad’s ouster but were met with silence.
Strong clues had pointed to the Army of Islam, the most powerful rebel faction in Douma at the time, as the perpetrators. The group, made up of religious hard-liners who were pushing out other rebels and imposing strict Shariah rules, long denied involvement. An Army of Islam official, Hamza Bayraqdar, told media in 2018 they brought Zaitouneh to Douma to protect her from the Assad government.
The Army of Islam repeatedly blamed the Assad government, along with the Nusra Front — an al-Qaida-linked group originally founded by the current HTS leader — for his wife’s disappearance, Saleh said.
Zaitouneh was a prominent human rights lawyer and founder of the Violation Documentation Center. She also helped organize networks of activists like the Local Coordination Committees, an umbrella network made up of activists who organized protests as part of the Syrian uprising.
Her work earned her international recognition, including an International Woman of Courage award presented by U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in 2013.
Several of those who spoke to the news agencies in 2018 said the Army of Islam saw Zaitouneh documenting abuses as a threat and resented her local administration plan as an encroachment on their power. Zaitouneh received a series of threats that friends and activists said traced back to the Army of Islam.
The Army of Islam was forced to move north in 2018 after the Assad government retook Douma, leading to the group’s weakening and disintegration. Hopes that Zaitouneh and her colleagues would emerge among released prisoners during that time were unmet.
Today, the Army of Islam remains an armed faction backed by Turkey. It did not fight alongside the other Islamist factions that led the offensive against Assad and remains excluded from the HTS-led Syrian leadership. Recently, an Army of Islam delegation met HTS leader Ahmad Sharaa to explore integration into the new Syrian system, but no agreement has been reached.
Protesters on Wednesday held banners openly accusing the Army of Islam and reading “Freedom” in English and “Traitor who kidnaps a revolutionary” in Arabic, alongside posters of the four missing activists.
Saleh described the plight of the disappeared as uniquely painful, saying, “Those who die are mourned, but the forcibly disappeared are forbidden from both living and being mourned.”
Their bodies must be found, he said, adding: “For Syria to heal, truth and justice must prevail.”
Wafa Moustafa, whose father was forcibly disappeared separately in 2013, also attended the protest.
“Justice in Syria cannot be limited to those detained by the Assad regime,” she said. “For many years, other factions controlled parts of Syria and committed similar crimes of detention, torture and killing. If justice does not include all victims, it will remain incomplete and threaten Syria’s future.”
A Syrian delegation led by the foreign and defense ministers, along with the head of intelligence, arrived in Saudi Arabia on their first official foreign trip, Syrian state media reported, citing a foreign ministry official.
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