Assad Regime Blackmails its Opponents Using Women

Twelve years was the length of time Amina had to wait to take revenge on her jailor, known as "the father of death". This officer had stripped her naked and left her in a tent with his soldiers from the Fourth Brigade for about seven hours. During interrogation there she was beaten till she bled and was abused in scenes that have remained so vivid in her memory it is as if they happened yesterday.
The charge this sixty-year-old woman faced was that her eldest son, Hatim, was a wanted opponent of the Assad regime, which ruled Syria "from father to son" since Hafez al-Assad took power in 1971 right up until the downfall of his son Bashar in 2024. Regime forces arrested Hatim's mother in order to pressure him to give himself up.

Amina Ahmad Kaako was just one in a long list of victims. Analysis of data leaked from the Air Force Intelligence Directorate (the most brutal of the various intelligence agencies in Damascus) more than 1,500 women were arbitrarily detained by Bashar al-Assad's regime between 2011 and 2017 and held on trumped-up charges such as "terrorism" or without facing any charges at all. These arrests were nothing more than an instrument of blackmail to pressure families into handing over their sons, or to be used in negotiations over the exchange of detainees. Although the names of victims appear in the records, the fate of thousands of female detainees remains unknown to this day – a flagrant violation of international law.

Of the 17 women named in the documents, only six – who come from Hama and Idlib - agreed to talk about their experiences. The remainder refused, preferring to keep silent after their prolonged suffering in prisons, during which were witness to the harshest forms of torture and abuse.

Amina was severely tortured for hours but refused to divulge any information about her son Hatim. Because she stayed silent, the interrogating officer decided to use another means of coercion. He took the phone belonging to one of her daughters-in-law, who was detained with her, and rang Hatem.

Hatim was sitting at home wondering what could have happened to his mother, whom he had been searching for in vain, when the phone rang. The officer told Hatim that his mother was being detained and that he had to come along himself if he wanted her released. "If you don't turn yourself in, we will send your mother and your two sisters-in-law back to you, minus their limbs," he threatened.

But Hatim knew full well that even if he turned himself in, the authorities would not release his mother and the others, so he lost all hope that they would come back. Hatim threatened the officer who was calling him that he would find out who he was and take revenge on him, to which the officer answered icily: "I’m the father of death... Don't threaten me."

Journey of displacement and tragedy

Amina Kaako lived with her family, including her children and grandchildren, in Moadmiyeh al-Sham, one of the largest areas of the Ghouta district of Damascus, about four kilometres from the centre. This town was one of the first areas where the 2011 Syrian revolution broke out, and Amina found herself trapped and under heavy bombardment. As the siege intensified, she was forced to flee with her daughters-in-law and grandchildren to an area in Mount Hermon.

The family settled there for a while, until one of her daughters-in-law fell ill three days after giving birth. They had no choice but to seek medical care in Damascus, but they had no idea their journey would end with them behind bars.

As they arrived at a Fourth Division Army checkpoint at the Darayya Junction, at 10:30am on 30th November 2012, soldiers stopped the car to check the identity of its passengers. After what seemed like an age, Amina, her two daughters-in-law and even the young children were all arrested. Amina was charged with associating with a wanted person.

Data on Syrian women arrested between 2011-2017, which we obtained from inside the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, shows that half of these detainees faced charges relating either to militants or to security concerns. The proportion of "those charged with having links with militants was 27 percent and 23 percent were suspects for security concerns." Sixteen percent of detainees were not charged with anything specific, while 12 percent were held simply because they were relatives of wanted men. Nine percent of detainees were used as bargaining chips in negotiations and exchanges.

The way these accused women were held and interrogated in different departments and agencies within the various security centre reflects the various charges against them. The key investigating and decision-making role went to the department dealing with Takfiri movements (like Daesh and others) and that carrying out security and counter-terrorism investigations.

Enforced disappearance is not a new practice in Syria; it dates back to the rule of former President Hafez al-Assad in the 1980s. But it reached its peak in the early years of the Syrian revolution. According to a report in September 2023 by the Syrian Women's Political Movement, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has recorded more than 112,000 cases of enforced disappearance since 2011, including about 7,000 women.

Salma Seif, head of the "Survivors of Detention" programme, explains that the regime would bring specific charges to deliberately harm female detainees and their families. They accused them most often of participating in "sexual jihad," a particularly commonly used charge at the time Salma herself was held in Adra Prison between 2014 and 2015. Women detainees were also charged with participating in the revolution, financing terrorism, criminal offences, and luring soldiers and officers. Since her work involved directing a charitable organisation, Salma was accused of funding terrorism, which led to her being detained for a year.

The stories of torture inside detention facilities are all truly tragic and include use of electric shocks, beating, suspension from ceiling, and sexual assault. These were the most commonly committed crimes inside prisons, alongside verbal insults and intimidation. Threats were used as a psychological weapon to "break detainees." They would threaten mothers with their children, and wives with their husbands. No woman in prison was spared these practices. When Amina refused to reveal the whereabouts of her son Hatim she was beaten with a metal object by the officer nicknamed "the father of death", resulting in head injuries that required 11 stitches.

We contacted six girls from the city of Homs, who were among the cases we had come across in the data we reviewed. Some of them had been arrested simply to blackmail and pressure their families, while others had been held because they had associated with revolutionaries. After spending about two years in detention, during which two were subjected to physical abuse, they were released in exchange for exorbitant sums of money.

Colonel Ahmad al-Hammadi, who defected from the army, confirmed that women were sometimes arrested to pressure their families for financial blackmail and that huge sums of money, "millions" in some cases, were demanded to secure their release. This was seen as an additional task for the security agencies, especially Airforce and Military intelligence directorates.

In addition, reprisal actions were carried out by the "Shabiha" – pro-regime paramilitaries with no official function. In Homs, for example, large numbers of women and girls were arrested as part of such reprisals. The Shabiha would arrest them from neighbourhoods associated with the rebels and take them off to unknown locations, often secret detention facilities.

According to the data, the number of female detainees has gone up significantly over the years. It shows that arrests began at a low level in 2011, rising in subsequent years and reaching a peak in 2015 before falling back again in 2016 and 2017.

Arrest as a bargaining chip: How did the Assad regime use women in exchange deals?

While data analysis showed that the level of arrests fluctuated, the practice did not end until the final moments of regime rule, according to the testimony of Salma Seif, head of "Survivors of Detention." She disclosed that the regime would persistently use detention as a means of pressure and would employ a special ruse when it came to amnesties. Before granting an amnesty, it would arrest some people, keep them for a month or two, and then release them under the amnesty, while those detained previously were not released.

Hatim's sense of responsibility towards his mother and his two sisters-in-law led him to collect together around 600 young men from his village to attack the Fourth Division checkpoint where his mother and the others had been arrested. Hatem had planned to take revenge on the officer called "the father of death ", but he abandoned the plan, fearing that a large number of young men would be killed in the subsequent battle.

The regime learned of Hatim’s plan, so it sent tribal sheikhs to negotiate a reconciliation with him. At that time, a number of the detainees in Moadmiyeh were released, but neither his mother Amina, nor his two sisters-in-law Maram and Manal were among them. Hatem decided not to go ahead with his plan, fearing for his family and still hoping that they might soon be released.

It was the norm for the Syrian government to employ a system of exchanges. For example, a female detainee from the city of Ariha was released along with 45 other women in an exchange deal. This detainee was the mother of one of the leaders of the armed groups in the region.

The data also shows that arrests based on family ties started in 2013, when there were 54 cases, and continued in subsequent years. Arrests for the purposes of negotiation, exchange or exerting pressure began in 2014, with 21 recorded cases. These reached a peak in 2015, when 90 women were detained to be used for negotiation.

A report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic found that the former Syrian government's systematic use of arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance to crush any opposition "constitutes crimes against humanity and war crimes." Lawyer Abdel Nasser Houshan, a human rights researcher and writer, argued that no Syrian citizen should be arrested or detained without a judicial warrant, as demanded by the constitution. The former regime practised extrajudicial detention and had no respect for liberty and human rights, including the rights of vulnerable groups, he added.

These vengeful and cruel practices have had a tragic human and psychological impact. Following their release, many detainees have struggled to cope. Some were divorced as a result of what they were subjected to, and others were unable to return to their families and instead opted to move far away. Some of these women were left with children whose fathers they did not know. This was the case with Safiya. Her husband was fighting with the Free Syrian Army in Ghouta, where she was arrested, with others of the family, to put pressure on her husband. She and her husband's two sisters were "repeatedly raped" while in detention and, after her release, her husband divorced her for a period because she had been raped, but later on went back to her.

"Give yourself up, or we’ll arrest your family"

Arrest warrants are used to put wanted persons under pressure. They are told: "Either you give yourself up, or we’ll arrest your family," or "We’ve got your relative, so either give yourself up or stop doing what you’re doing." This is what happened to Kawthar and her uncle’s wife, Itimad, whose cases we learned of through the data we obtained.

The two women were arrested without any real charges being pressed against them, except that Kawthar had hidden her mobile phone and had failed to hand it to the security forces when they stormed into her house and arrested her husband. Itimad was arrested only because the regime alleged that her son had links with the revolutionaries and had been accused of working with "terrorists".

Kawthar and Itimad spent two and a half years in prison at the Mezze branch of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate in Damascus. After spending ages searching for them, amid a strict security blackout, their family was forced to pay large sums of money just to find out where they were being held. During their detention, Kawthar was severely tortured physically, while Itimad did not suffer the same level of torture.

Their arrest was part of a vengeful plan devised by the regime to try to force two family members to give themselves up, through a systematic programme of oppression and abuse directed against their relatives. Lawyer Abdel Nasser Houshan confirmed that most arrests were made in order to blackmail and pressure families into handing over people wanted by the authorities. Moreover, the regime did not allow the families of detainees to see them, nor to appoint lawyers, thereby depriving them of the sacrosanct right to a legal defence.

According to the data we obtained, most of the arrests made by the Air Force Intelligence Directorate between 20110-2017 were in the governorate of Damascus and its surrounding countryside areas, with a total of 615 women arrested. The governorate with the next highest level of female arrests was Homs with three cases, while Deraa, Hama and Aleppo had lower numbers.

We have managed to establish – through our contacts with victims in Damascus, Homs, Hama and Idlib, from data we obtained and from the testimony of Salma Seif and Ahmad al-Hammadi – that arrests were concentrated in areas considered to be incubators of the revolution.

In Damascus and the surrounding countryside, Ghouta (where Amina lived) was one of the areas where most arrests took place, being a prominent centre of the revolutionary movement. In Homs, areas such as Baba Amr saw a widespread campaign of arrests, because of local residents’ support for the revolution. And in Idlib, the increased rate of arrests took in visitors to the city. as well as its residents.

There were arrests too in areas such as Hama, Jisr al-Shughour, and al-Bab, where simply coming from there was grounds enough to be arrested. Detainees from these areas were humiliated during their arrest, either because of their names or where the districts they were from. They also faced threats and humiliating treatment at checkpoints, as if coming from these areas was an offence in itself.

Main areas which saw increased arrests

Jisr Al-Shughour

Hama

Daraa

Damascus countryside

Idlib

Al-Bab

Baba Amr

The regime did not differentiate between elderly women or girls. Amina was over sixty when she was arrested, while her daughter-in-law Manal was only in her twenties. When her other daughter-in-law, Maram, was arrested she was only 16.

In the data we obtained, the age of about half of the women arrested was not given. Of the rest, most were aged between 26 and 40, while around five percent of the total were children under 18, including infants.

Fadel Abdulghany, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), describes arrests as "kidnapping." He says: "There’s no difference between arrests of women and arrests of men. They’re all arbitrary. There’s no warrant from the public prosecutor… no legal or judicial warrant at all. It’s the nearest thing to kidnapping. We call it maltreatment through arrest."

In its thirteenth annual report on abuse of women in Syria, the SNHR says that regime forces pursued a deliberate policy of targeting women through arrest and forced disappearance from the beginning of the conflict in 2011. This strategy was used as a means of control and intimidation, as arrest mostly turned into forced disappearance.

Manal was released after six days, while Amina and Maram were kept in detention for about 12 days before being freed. They were held during this period in both the Fourth Division headquarters and Mezzeh Airport. They were never charged with anything, they were being kept merely as hostages.

Although Amina was released, her son Hatim could not put the experience behind him. He imagined day and night taking revenge on the officer called "the father of death," especially after hearing from his mother about the physical and psychological torture she had endured in detention. Though years have now passed since she was detained, Hatem has thought of nothing else but getting to "the father of death" and taking revenge on him.

According to lawyer Abdel Nasser Houshan, victims’ families are now able to take out a legal case in local courts or even international ones against elements of the former regime. There are three routes to justice: the Syrian judiciary, which has the basic jurisdiction; the International Criminal Court; and those foreign courts which have universal jurisdiction.

Analysis of the data we obtained showed that, of 1,530 women arrested during the period in question, 980 of them were released - 64 percent. This leaves 536 women - or 35 percent - whose fate remains unknown.

The data also showed that the highest number of releases was in 2013, when 303 women were freed. In 2015 there were 192 releases, while 2017 saw the lowest number of women freed - not more than five.

In December 2024, after 12 years of waiting, Amina, now 80, at last saw the downfall of the regime. Despite her deteriorating health, she insisted on going back home. On the way, she asked to stop at Umayyad Square. She got out, leaning on her crutch, to celebrate the moment she had long dreamed of. But her joy was short-lived. The next day she passed away, as though her body could not bear this achievement of the "impossible."

Her son Hatim till today lives in the hope of finding and avenging himself on the officer called "the father of death," the man who abused and threatened his mother in prison all those years ago.

Amina was one of those lucky women who lived to see the fall of the regime. But what about the others? Hundreds of women are still missing; some of them are confirmed dead and the rest remain unaccounted for. Behind walls, or in unmarked graves, their souls are still waiting for justice and for those responsible to be finally held to account.

*Due to the prevailing security situation in Syria during the investigation, ARIJ was unable to contact any former security officials in Syria through official channels. ARIJ will continue to monitor the criminal cases filed against them in the relevant courts.

This investigation was completed with support from ARIJ