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Detainee Sara Alaou Forcibly-Disappeared by Authorities in Daraa Central Prison | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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A still image taken from a video uploaded on a social media website shows what it says are government security forces walking outside Hama prison, Syria, May 7, 2016 after a revolt by its inmates. Social Media Website/Handout via Reuters TV


London-According to the monthly report published by Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), between the beginning of 2014 and June 2016, five women detainees from Daraa Central Prison have been forcibly-disappeared by the Syrian authorities as their fates are still unknown to their families. Sara Al-Alaou is the latest.

Al-Alaou enforced-disappearance follows no less than 58,000 forcibly-disappeared civilians who will face sentences secretly issued by the military field-court. Usually, these sentences are death.

Sara Khaled Al-Alaou, from Al-Bokamal city in Deir Ez-Zour governorate, born in 1994, is a student at the medical institute in Damascus University. On Monday 10 June 2013, she was arrested from the campus of Damascus University by security forces and was transferred to a security branch in Damascus city.

Also, the Syrian authorities haven’t revealed any information about her to her family as she has been forcibly-disappeared.

However, her parents were shocked when Al-Alaou appeared in a news report broadcasted on Syria TV. Parents are certain that Sara was compelled under torture to confess false facts.

She claimed that she got enrolled in ISIS when she was 16, in Grade 10, and that she widely practiced Jihad al-Nikah, also referred to as sexual Jihad.

SNHR revealed in a previous report that the Syrian regime obliged up to 14 women, among them under-age girls, to appear on TV and admit that they have been practicing Jihad al-Nikah.

Detainees in Syria are brutally tortured to take out confessions from them before being transferred to courts of strict procedures that prohibit the right to defend. In this type of courts, trials take few minutes only and the military field-court is considered to be the worst of them all.