Syria: Female Detainees Swap One Prison for Another

For a while, Fairuz wished that she’d never left prison. The looks she got from her family, full of blame and doubt, felt more painful than the torture she had gone through in Adra prison, part of the Damascus Central Prison, where she spent six months of her life.

Fairuz, 35, is from Jabal al-Zawiya and was arrested at the Qatifa checkpoint in Damascus as she was travelling to visit her husband, the commander of a rebel unit in Eastern Ghouta.

“Inside the prison, I met a lawyer who helped me enormously, both materially and psychologically. After they released her, she worked to try to get me out,” she recalled. “After six months in the cell, I was released. I wasn’t raped, but I was tortured. On my way home, I was filled with indescribable joy at finally being free, but I was shocked by the cold welcome I received from my family and my husband’s family.

“It was as though I’d committed a real crime. They never said anything to me outright, but their eyes were full of blame and recrimination. I wished I’d never been released, because I found myself in an even bigger prison – the prison of custom and tradition that has always constrained our lives.”

Um Samar, 50, sits all day on a main road outside her home, her sad face and sorrowful eyes searching out any passer-by who might bring news of her imprisoned daughter.

Her daughter Samar, 30, is married to a policeman who turned against the regime two years after the revolution. He was arrested and imprisoned in Damascus. Samar has been missing for nine months.

“Samar never stopped searching for a way to visit her husband and get news of how he was,” her mother said. “One day, one of her relatives came to visit and said that she had been to see her own husband in Damascus two days ago, and that she had been permitted to do so after going through a number of formalities. Quickly, Samar began gathering all the papers necessary for travel, and left that same day for Damascus with her husband’s aunt, whose husband was also in prison.

“In Damascus, they stayed with the family of a relative, and the next day they began the formalities necessary to try to get a visiting permit. Samar and her relative both disappeared when they got to the security agency,” Um Samar said. “We’ve been searching for them ever since, with no news or success.”

She paused for a long while before continuing, “We’re poor, we have very few resources, and Samar’s father is ill and hard of hearing. He barely speaks. I wish I knew right now where she is and how she is. I wouldn’t be sad if I found out she had died, because death is a reward that comes to us all. But I can’t stand the thought of her being tortured and suffering in a prison, while we are here unable to do anything for her.”

Qamar, 22, is from Kafr Nabel and a student at Aleppo university. She was arrested 15 days ago. Her mother, Um Ahmad, 43, described the day it happened.

“She used to go to university all the time without incident, but this time, I don’t know what happened on her way home. The driver of the car in which my daughter was riding told me they were stopped at a regime checkpoint to be searched. They asked for everyone’s IDs, including the women’s, and when they saw my daughter’s ID, they looked at her and ordered her out of the car.

“The driver, her friends, and everyone else in the car tried to ask the officer in charge at the checkpoint why she’d been arrested, but he wouldn’t tell them anything,” she continued. “Maybe it’s because one of our relatives was a leader in the revolution, since my daughter never took part in any activism against the regime and never went out to the front or took part in any battles.

“We appointed a lawyer to handle the case, and she told us Qamar had died in prison. She was never ill. There is no doubt she died because of the torture they subjected her to. Her father is in the grips of a great psychological crisis. He refuses to even talk about her with anyone else because he finds people’s talk so cruel and pitiless.”

Um Abdu, a neighbour, unwittingly illustrated this point.

“May God have mercy on Abu Ahmad and his family from this terrible catastrophe,” she said. “On the one hand the incarceration of their daughter, and on the other the gossip of everyone around them.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper before continuing, “In fact, their daughter isn’t dead. She’s still in prison, and they’re probably telling everyone she’s passed away just to stop people talking about her. Many people say she’s probably been raped in prison, and her family doesn’t want to hear this so they say she’s dead. Maybe she is really dead, I don’t know.”

Abdelsittar Kfarjumi, 50, from a village in Jabal al-Zawiya, has a daughter, Ibtisam, 20, who was arrested in August. She too was a student at Aleppo university.

“I’m trying all means and various ways to find out anything about my daughter so as to try to get her released,” says Kfarjumi. “I don’t care what anyone has to say. I know my daughter, I know the kind of person she is, and whatever has happened to her in prison is not her fault. It’s not the fault of any girl or woman or person is subjected to that, so long as we are in a state of war and in the middle of a revolution that has ignited the country.”

Abdelsalam al-Rahmoun, 48, commander of the Liwa al-Haqq [an armed Islamist rebel group] who hails from the village of Jabla, adjacent to Kafr Nabel, explained the extent of the stigma to Damascus Bureau.

“We rarely hear about any girls or women in detention because we don’t receive complaints from their parents,” he said. “This means there’s no possibility of trying to negotiate a barter with them for our own regime prisoners.”

“Parents shouldn’t be ashamed of their daughters because they’ve been in prison,” Kafr Nabel mayor Mohamad al-Buyush, 68, said. “They should take pride, because their daughters have committed no crime to warrant their arrest. They were simply going about their lives, continuing their education, going to work, and through that defying and resisting all the difficulties in which they live, when they were arrested by a murderous, tyrannical regime which doesn’t distinguish between man and woman, child and senior citizen.”

“I don’t care what any of them say about me,” concluded Fairuz, who is still grateful for her release despite people’s view of her. “I’m going to continue my normal, daily life with my children and always pray to God that the rest of the women in prison will also be free one day.”

Hadia Mansour is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor in Syria.

This story was produced by Syria Stories (previously Damascus Bureau), IWPR’s news platform for Syrian journalists.