On November 5, 2023, 10 women from the Afrin area of northwestern Aleppo governorate were arrested by soldiers from the Syrian regime’s Fourth Division at a checkpoint in Bab Janban neighborhood in Aleppo city. The women were travelling from their place of residence in al-Shahba area in northern Aleppo governorate to the neighborhoods of al-Sheikh Maqsoud and al-Ashrafiya in Aleppo city, both of which are controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The women were subsequently taken to the State Security branch in Aleppo city.
The arrests were carried out without any court-issued legal warrant being presented. The women’s families were not informed of their arrest, while their phones were seized, and they have not been allowed to contact their families or a lawyer since then.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) is concerned that they may be subjected to torture in detention and may go on to become yet more enforced disappearance cases, with 85 percent of all those detained falling into this category.
We call for the provision of both material and moral reparations for these women and all other victims of such detentions and for their families, and call on all parties to put an end to all arbitrary detentions whose only purpose is to spread mass fear and extort people.
We also call on the regime to reveal the fate of thousands of people forcibly disappeared in its detention centers. We are seriously concerned about their fates.
