Clues but no answers in one of Syria war’s biggest mysteries
DOUMA, SYRIA» Razan Zaitouneh earned enemies on all sides of her homeland’s civil war.
One of Syria’s most well-known rights activists, she was bold, outspoken and defiantly secular. Perhaps most dangerously, she was impartial. She chanted in protests against President Bashar Assad, but was also unflinching in documenting abuses by rebels fighting to oust him.
Then she vanished.
Her fate has been one of the longest-running mysteries of Syria’s long conflict. There has been no sign of life, no proof of death since a cold December evening in 2013 when Zaitouneh, her husband and two colleagues were abducted by gunmen from her office in Douma, a rebel-held town on the outskirts of Damascus.
Five years later, bits of clues are emerging: a handwritten threat vowing “I will kill you;” a log-on from her computer after the kidnappers stole it from her office; possible sightings by witnesses and reports of graffiti on a prison cell wall reading, “I miss my mother — Razan Zaitouneh, 2016.”
The clues give strong indications that Zaitouneh was taken by the Army of Islam, the most powerful rebel faction in Douma at the time, and was then likely held in its feared Tawbeh Prison. The Army of Islam vehemently denies any role in her disappearance.
It is also likely she was killed, though how long after the abduction is unknown, several friends and colleagues told The Associ- ated Press.
The small hope that she and the others were kept alive in detention was shaken in April, when Syrian government forces retook Douma. The Army of Islam’s fighters, their families and thousands of civilians were evacuated north in buses. Prisoners were released. But Zaitouneh and her colleagues did not surface.
An AP team recently toured the abandoned Tawbeh Prison, a compound that once was a desertification research facility for the Agriculture Ministry. The complex was transformed into a dark maze of cells where the Army of Islam held hundreds of people over the years, including opponents.
Solitary confinement cells were tiny, a meter wide and 2 meters long with a latrine hole at one end. The complex was laced with tunnels connecting the buildings and leading outside the compound.
The AP interviewed a dozen activists, rebels and acquaintances of Zaitouneh and locals from Douma to assemble what is known about her disappearance. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because they were concerned about upsetting the families or feared reprisals.
Zaitouneh was already well-known before the war as a defense lawyer for political prisoners.
She became one of the faces of the early days of Syria’s uprising in 2011, when protesters took to the streets calling for Assad’s removal. At one rally shown in an online video, she shouts through a loudspeaker, “Civil disobedience will continue until we bring down Bashar Assad’s regime.”
Zaitouneh founded the Violation Documentation Center as well as a network of activists, the Local Coordination Committees. She received a string of international honors; in 2013, then-U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry honored her as an International Woman of Courage.
“She is a woman of principles,” said opposition activist Mazen Darwish, who has known her for nearly 18 years. “She is a woman who loves life, open minded and is a good friend.”
Zaitouneh went into hiding as Syrian authorities arrested opposition activists in Damascus. In early 2013, she escaped into rebel-held Douma, the largest town in the eastern Ghouta region.
There, she stood out — in appearance and advocacy. Zaitouneh and her colleague Samira al-Khalil went in public without a headscarf in the conservative town, where almost all women wear the headscarf or face veils. She also worked on creating a local administration to provide civilian authority amid the armed groups. Zaitouneh got funding from abroad, money that she used to help victims of the conflict, apparently upsetting the Army of Islam rebels.