Contact was lost with Ms. Zeina Issa Mahmoud, who belongs to the Alawite sect and hails from Tartous Province in western Syria, at around noon on Monday, December 1, 2025, while she was at the Tartous city bus station. She is married and has children.
The following day, Tuesday, December 2, 2025, the victim’s sister received a video call from Zeina’s own phone, lasting only 18 seconds. A unidentified person appeared in the call, explicitly stating that the young woman had been “kidnapped” on the pretext that one of her relatives had worked for an institution of the former regime. During the call, Zeina appeared fully restrained and in the corner of a room, with no additional details provided about her place of detention.
After the call ended, the victim’s phone was completely shut off, and the family received no further information, suggesting that the young woman had been subjected to a kidnapping motivated by revenge related to political circumstances involving her relatives.
As of the time of preparing this report, the fate of Zeina Issa Mahmoud remains unknown, amid the absence of any information about the kidnapping party or the conditions of her detention. The incident stands as an example of enforced disappearance and violations associated with extortion and threats in areas controlled by the temporary authority “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.”
With Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham assuming power in Syria on December 8, 2025, kidnappings targeting women from the Alawite sect have escalated. Although some kidnapped women have returned after being subjected to torture, ill-treatment, and sexual assault, the fate of many of them remains unknown.
In an attempt to downplay the issue of the kidnapped women, the temporary authorities affiliated with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham resort to fabricating narratives and incidents aimed at undermining the credibility of organizations that publish information about these cases. They also sometimes present the kidnapped woman publicly to claim she was never abducted, or pressure families and the kidnapped women to force them to change their statements.
