In 2013, Syrian dentist Rania al-Abbasi disappeared alongside her husband and six children inside the detention system of the former Syrian regime, becoming one of the country’s most well-known cases of enforced disappearance.
Rania was not an ordinary figure.
She was a respected dentist in Damascus, a former Syrian chess champion, and a mother of six children ranging in age from three to fifteen.
The family lived in the Damascus neighborhood of Mashrou Dummar, far from any political activity. But as the Syrian war deepened, even ordinary families found themselves pulled into the machinery of arrest and disappearance.
In March 2013, her husband, Dr. Abdulrahman, was arrested after reportedly being accused of assisting a wanted individual.
Two days later, security forces raided the family home again and arrested Rania along with all six of her children:
Dima, Intisar, Najah, Alaa, Ahmad, and Lian.
None of them have been seen since.
Over the years, fragments of information emerged from former detainees who claimed Rania had been held inside detention facilities, while reports also circulated about children being heard in nearby cells. Unconfirmed reports later suggested that Abdulrahman may have died under torture after leaked “Caesar” photos from Syrian prisons surfaced publicly.
The fate of the six children, however, remains unknown.
As the years passed, the case became a global symbol of Syria’s detainee and disappearance crisis, particularly because it involved the disappearance of young children inside the prison system.
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, repeatedly called for answers about the family’s fate. Following the collapse of the former Syrian regime, the case resurfaced widely among activists and journalists demanding access to prison archives and information about thousands of missing Syrians.