IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – Su’ad al-Mansour (a pseudonym), a displaced woman in the city of Idlib, northwest Syria, offered what she could sell from her furniture to pay off her debts, after she lost all of her money and gold jewelry in a scam.
Wives of detainees in Idlib are subjected to scams by individuals close to the security services and lawyers, who ask for large sums of money to reveal the fate of their detained husbands. After paying the money, the women are shocked to find that those members and lawyers have changed their phone numbers and blocked them on social media.
Early this year, al-Mansour paid $2,500 to a lawyer residing in Damascus to reveal the fate of her husband, who has been detained for years, after she borrowed $700 to complete the required amount.
However, after transferring the money, she was surprised that the lawyer had changed all his phone numbers and contacts.
In late 2013, government security services arrested al-Mansour’s husband while he was on his way to Idlib.
Al-Mansour’s concern about the fate of her husband, and her children’s continued inquiries about their father, prompted her to transfer the money without thinking about the consequences, after assurances from the lawyer of his ability to reveal his whereabouts.
Large amounts of money
A report of the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP), issued in January, said that guards, soldiers, judges, individuals, and even middlemen sometimes receive huge bribes from detainees’ families.
“That money ends up in the pockets of corrupt officials and warlords,” said Diyab Sarih, the report’s author and co-founder of ADMSP.
The report called on the international community to pressure Russia and the Syrian government to reveal the fates of the missing and allow the families of those still alive to visit them.
Those interviewed by North Press said that the average amount of money required by mediators or lawyers to work on the file of a missing or detained person ranged between $1,000 and $5,000.
While a number of them were able to obtain information about their husbands, such as an audio clip, an ID photo, or a picture of him from prison, these documents are often expensive.
According to the statistics of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 968,651 people have been arrested since the beginning of the Syrian war by the regime’s security services, of whom more than 105,902 were tortured to death.
More than 83% of detainees were assassinated inside the detention centers in the period between May and October 2013, according to SOHR.
Changing phone numbers
Last month, Marwa al-Rashid (a pseudonym), a woman from al-Dana, north of Idlib, was subjected to a similar fraud through a mediator from her area who is residing in Damascus.
Al-Rashid paid a large sum of money, hoping that her husband would get out of prison after a seven-year detention.
She had to sell her house and pay for the middleman, who said that he would coordinate between her and a lawyer in Damascus, but as soon as he received the money, he blocked her on social media and changed his phone number.
Al-Rashid expressed her frustration at what happened to her, especially as she ended up living in a tent, leaving her children without a home in the midst of a miserable living and economic situation after losing everything.
She added that she had lost hope of her husband’s return after the fraud, and that she might seek a divorce from her detained husband and remarry, so that “I may find a breadwinner to support me and my two children.”
Some wives say that they endure difficult psychological, social, and living conditions, and do not know whether they should accept the deaths of their husbands in detention centers and continue their lives without them, or if they should wait in the hope of receiving news that discredits what they heard about their deaths.
A 2021 UN report estimates that 100,000 people are missing due to the Syrian conflict, and the numbers continue to rise.
Maryam al-Aswad (a pseudonym), the mother of a detainee, was planning to send $2,500 to a lawyer in Damascus to reveal the fate of her son, before discovering that the same person had committed fraud with a number of her relatives.
The 40-year-old woman said that the lawyer convinced her of his ability to find out her son’s whereabouts, “but I discovered, through inquiries from people, that the lawyer changes his phone number after receiving the money.”