A video published on the internet on May 29, 2020, shows members of the military police and opposition factions raiding the headquarters of another opposition faction, al Hamzah Brigade, in Afrin city in the northern suburbs of Aleppo governorate. In the video, detained women appear to be held inside the headquarters building. According to the video, SNHR estimates that eight women are being detained there; we have managed to identify four of them who were kidnapped at the beginning of 2020 by gunmen whose identities were unknown at that time, with the kidnappers subjecting the women’s families to blackmail attempts to secure their release.
SNHR calls on those detaining the women to reveal the identities of all eight and of all others subjected to forced disappearance, to secure their release and the release of all detainees imprisoned by armed opposition factions without judicial charges, and to end the policy of carrying out arrests without legal warrants. Individuals should also be detained only briefly before being presented in a court of law. Efforts to deny the detention of detainees and to conceal their fate deprives them of their fundamental rights to contact family members or appoint defense attorneys, and results in their being classified as being forcibly disappeared. These practices, which are a reproduction of those practiced by the Syrian regime, constitute violations of international human rights law, and, if they took place on the basis of the armed conflict, they constitute violations of international humanitarian law. SNHR’s database indicates that at least 15 women are currently classified as having been forcibly disappeared in the Afrin region since the beginning of 2020 until now.
For video, see following link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hbjR0ZqqB2gatMxb2PiSklOBikUcwXk-
