On the international day of the right to the truth... Saba is struggling to trace her husband’s footsteps.
Souheib Khalaf — North Syria
In the morning, Saba says goodbye to her only eight-year-old child to go to his school, while she goes to another school where she works as an educational counselor.
Saba is not accustomed to life in the northern countryside of Idlib, where she has lived in an atmosphere of alienation from her city, Maarat al-Numan, since she was displaced from it about a year ago, during the control of the Russian-backed regime forces.
This alienation is not the only challenge in the life of Saba and her son. They lived bitterly, losing the father, who was arrested by the regime forces about 9 years ago.
It seems that Saba tried to make the best out of the experience of arresting her husband and her constant attempts to know his fate.
She was active with her friends in the field of detainees' rights, and they founded the movement “families for freedom” which includes Syrian women living in different countries and they aim to help detainees’ families to know the fate of their children.
In her interview with Al-Jazeera net, Saba says that she tried very hard to obtain information about her husband’s fate, but did not succeed in her mission. She adds that she was subjected to fraud by the regime’s “brokers”, who promised to get her information about her husband to allow her to visit him.
She explains that she had doubts about their story, as they told her that they are able to do anything and they are capable of bringing her husband’s shirt that he was wearing the day of his arrest, and Saba decided to sell her jewelry and gave them the amount they asked for in the hope their words would be true but they disappeared.
Regarding the policy of the Assad regime on the file of detainees, lawyer Fahd Al-Mousa, head of the committee to release prisoners and detainees in opposition areas, told Al-Jazeera Net, that by arresting people and forcibly disappearing them, the regime wants to terrorize the Syrians and break their will. He added that regime officials benefit greatly financially by providing information to detainees’ families.
Al-Mousa explains that detainees’ families have only the option of dealing with the intermediaries and “brokers” in an unofficial way in the hope of releasing their sons out of prisons in exchange of sums of money but this subject them to deception constantly, and they do not dare to disclose any information about this due to fear for the fate of their sons in prisons.
Statistics by the Syrian network for human rights indicate that the number of detainees held by the different parties in Syria is about 150,000 and that the regime is responsible for arresting 88% of them, and more than 14 thousand died torture due to torture. Sednaya prison, near Damascus city, is one of the most famous prisons in the country. It is known as “the human slaughterhouse”.
Source: Aljazeera.net (Original Content -Arabic)
