DOUMA, Syria — Protesters inside Syria staged a sit-in on 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 December 9, 2013, armed men stormed the Violation Documentation Center in Douma, northeast of Damascus, taking Razan Zaitouneh, her husband Wael Hamadeh, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi.
Outspoken and defiantly secular, Zaitouneh was one of Syria’s best-known human rights activists. Perhaps most dangerous of all was that she was impartial. She sang at protests against then-President Bashar Assad, but was also fearless in documenting abuses by rebels fighting to oust him.
There has been no sign of life nor evidence of death since she and her colleagues were abducted.
Since Assad’s ouster on December 8, protests demanding information have erupted across Syria thousands of people who disappeared by force 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 on allegations against several armed groups over the forcible disappearance of activists. At the same time, HTS has joined activists in their efforts to expose the truth and seek justice.
“We gather here to remind the world of their cause,” Yassin Haj Saleh, Khalil’s husband, said on Wednesday, adding that the disappearance of activists represents “the deepest wounds” of the Syrian conflict. “This is the first opportunity that allows us to be in Douma, and in front of the place where they were kidnapped, to speak about the case and take advantage of the political change that has taken place in the country.”
Saleh said that in the years before Assad’s ouster, they had repeatedly appealed to various armed groups to cooperate in finding the four activists, but had been met with silence.
There were strong indications that the Army of Islam, the most powerful rebel faction in Douma at the time, were the perpetrators. The group, made up of religious hardliners who drove out other rebels and imposed strict sharia rules, long denied involvement. An official of the Army of Islam, Hamza Bayraqdar, told The Associated Press 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-Qaeda-linked group originally founded by the current HTS leader – for his wife’s disappearance, Saleh said.
Zaitouneh was a leading human rights lawyer and founder of the Violation Documentation Center. She also helped organize activist networks such as 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 US First Lady Michelle Obama in 2013.
Several of those who spoke to the AP in 2018 said Islam’s military saw Zaitouneh as a threat for documenting abuses and resented her local governance plan as an erosion of their power. Zaitouneh received a series of threats that friends and activists say traced back to the Army of Islam.
Islam’s army was forced to move north in 2018 after the Assad government retook Douma, leading to the group’s weakening and disintegration. The hope that Zaitouneh and her colleagues would emerge among the released prisoners at that time was not fulfilled.
Today, the Army of Islam remains an armed faction backed by Turkey. It did not fight alongside the other Islamist factions leading the offensive against Assad and remains excluded from the HTS-led Syrian leadership. Recently, a delegation from the Army of Islam met with HTS leader Ahmad Sharaa to explore integration into the new Syrian system, but no agreement was reached.
Protesters on Wednesday held banners openly accusing the military of Islam and reading “Freedom” in English and “Traitor who kidnaps a revolutionary” in Arabic, next to posters of the four missing activists.
Describing the fate of the disappeared as uniquely painful, Saleh said: “Those who die are mourned, but those who are forcibly disappeared are forbidden to live and be 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, was also present at the protest.
“Justice in Syria cannot be limited to those held by the Assad regime,” she said. “For years, other factions controlled parts of Syria and committed similar crimes such as detention, torture and murder. If justice does not include all victims, it will remain incomplete and threaten Syria’s future.”
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Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut, Lebanon.