Three Syrians, two young women and a young man, hailing from Tartous governorate, were kidnapped simultaneously at close intervals. The kidnappers sent photos and videos showing their torture to blackmail their families into paying a large ransom.
Safita
Tartous, one of the most prominent supporters of the Syrian regime and its president, Bashar al-Assad, recently witnessed a kidnapping incident reported by local news pages from the countryside of Safita. Christina Ibrahim, a 21-year-old woman from the village of Beit al-Marj, was kidnapped ten days ago while traveling to Damascus to procure materials for her workplace.
The pages quoted Christina’s sister, who stated that the kidnappers contacted them from an area in the countryside of Homs, demanding a ransom of $60,000. The kidnappers threatened to kill Christina and sell her organs if the ransom was not paid.
Christina’s sister also mentioned that the kidnappers are torturing her in the most heinous ways, sending photos and videos documenting the torture. The family is being subjected to psychological, moral, and material extortion, and they have appealed to the security services for help in freeing Christina.
Video clips circulated on social media show Christina being subjected to gruesome and sadistic torture by her captors, with distress calls for her rescue. The images clearly show blood and bruises all over her body, resulting from the torture.
Mohamed and Judy
At the same time, a young man named Mohamed Ahmed al-Fadhli was kidnapped by a gang that transferred him to an area in the countryside of Homs near the border with Lebanon. The kidnappers sent pictures to his family showing severe torture to extort them into paying a ransom of $50,000 for his release.
Two days ago, a young woman named Judy Zgheiba was kidnapped under unknown circumstances. Her family announced on Friday night that she had been found ‘through the efforts of the Criminal Security Branch in Tartous and its head, Brigadier General Yasser al-Ali,’ without clarifying the circumstances of her case.
Amid the security services’ inability to find Mohamed and Christina, the correspondent of the Criminal Security Branch in Damascus shared a questionable account. He claimed that Judy had left her home due to family disputes without identification papers and was found by a woman from the municipality of Husseiniya in the southern countryside of Damascus. This woman allegedly coordinated with the head of the branch in Tartous and the mayor of the town to return Judy to her family. This account raised doubts among followers, who questioned how security barriers between the two governorates were bypassed without identification papers.
Three kidnapped from Tartous
If the account of the branch correspondent is correct, the common element between the abductions of Mohamed and Christina is that they were kidnapped and transferred to the countryside of Homs near the border with Lebanon. A shared factor in all three incidents is that the abductees are from Tartous and specifically belong to the Alawite sect.
In the countryside of Homs, near the Syrian-Lebanese border, there are armed smuggling gangs. Some of these gangs are supported by the Fourth Division and others by security branches. The most prominent among them is the Shuja al-Ali gang, which has received hundreds of millions from previous kidnappings of Syrians attempting to cross the border between the two countries.
Criticism of regime’s security
Kinan Waqaf, a Syrian opposition journalist from Tartous, criticized the failure of the security branches to free the kidnapped individuals. On Facebook, he wrote, ‘All security branches mobilize with their equipment and personnel, going to great lengths to track down a simple citizen who wrote two words of criticism about the lowest-ranking official on his page, determining his whereabouts with great accuracy to arrest him within a quarter of an hour.’
He added, ‘But these same branches invent a hundred excuses and tell a thousand stories to justify their failure to rescue two girls who were kidnapped days ago, with ransom demands made openly in broad daylight.’ He continued, ‘The kidnappers are not living on Mars. The kidnappings took place in areas controlled by the state, and they contact the families of the kidnapped using mobiles on Syrian networks. Please, show us your capabilities.’
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
