The call began with a timid text message to her mother’s mobile phone: “… how are you?”
It had been nearly three months since Batoul Alloush — a promising university student — was apparently abducted, presented to the public as a willing convert to Sunni Islam, and cut off from her family and studies.
The parents, forced to flee their home since they went public challenging Batoul’s abduction, had been waiting for this moment. As the long-awaited call began, her father made sure to record.
“Don’t be afraid,” she started, according to her father.
Her parents asked where she was, but she would not reveal her location, only claiming that she was with a female friend.
“There were voices of men around her, no women,” her father recounted to Christian Solidarity International.
But despite the apparent guidance from her handlers, the conversation took a disturbing turn.
“I said, ‘where can I come to see you?’ She said, ‘the place I saw you before,’” Batoul’s father recounted. “I asked, ‘the court?’”
“She said, ‘no, I’ve never been in a court.’”
Her answer was chilling. The only place Batoul’s parents had seen her in person since her abduction was the general security courtroom in the city of Jableh.
It was the day they thought they would be allowed to take their daughter home to safety, but instead realised the system was protecting the abductors.
Meeting in green
Batoul’s father recounted that painful day in detail.
“Since Batoul disappeared, I’ve been back and forth constantly to Jableh to demand answers about my daughter,” the father told CSI.
Finally, he was told he could see his daughter if he recorded a video stating that he had seen her and all was fine. Under pressure and desperate to find her, he finally assented.
“At the general security building, we entered the courtroom, and there was a judge already there, as well as police officers, and the clerk who records.
“We asked the judge, when are we going to see Batoul? We want to take her home. She said, ‘shut your mouth, or we’ll put you in prison.’ She said that to Batoul’s mother as well.”
When he first caught sight of Batoul, her father was full of excitement and relief.
“My heart was beating, expecting she’s going to run to us and hug us,” he said.
“But to my shock, she couldn’t walk. There were two men dragging her in. It was as if she had just had an operation and come off anesthesia and was being dragged from her bed.”
But what shocked him and his wife even more was her dress. She was completely veiled in green, “head to toe, and her eyes barely showed, like a concubine.”
“This is not our culture, this was not our Syrian culture. It was like she was a war spoils,” he recounted.
“There were iron bars and she was leaning her head against them,” he continued. “So it was us who ran to her.”
The guards, however, would not let the parents embrace their daughter, who had already been presented to the public via government-adjacent media and influencers as a sincere convert to Islam.
“After eight days of not seeing our daughter, they don’t allow us to hug or kiss her so I got on my knees to kiss her feet.
“After that they pushed us apart. They said stay away from her,” he said.
And it was not the judge in charge, the father said, but the local security chief — Sheikh Salah al-Din —who had barged in to oversee the meeting against the judge’s will.
Batoul’s father had already heard about the notorious “sheikh” — not a religious scholar but rather a title for a chief holding sway in the new state apparatus.
“From the first day we went to [Batoul’s] university to check the security cameras, we saw that the cameras showed when she entered, but not when she left. There was a sheikh in the university who told me your mystery is with Sheikh Salah al-Din. So when I went to Jableh I asked who is Sheikh Salah al-Din. They told me, ‘Oh God, you are in deep trouble.’”
‘For the fingernail of my daughter’
Since that day, Batoul’s parents have not seen their daughter in person.
“That Sunday, when we were supposed to get her, we slept two nights in the forest in the mountains,” Batoul’s father said.
“It wasn’t 15 minutes after we left Jableh that I got news that the police cars of the government are searching for me. They sent an unbelievable amount of cars, I could see from above Jableh the convoy of police vehicles. This was after I went public on social media.”
The family has since fled the province, and the country.
They would later hear through their networks that Batoul had returned to the general security building of Jableh, but this time — according to their sources — to be registered in a marriage to one of Sheikh Salah al-Din’s men from Idlib.
Batoul’s sudden call, they believe, was prompted by the announcement days before that a Lebanese lawyer had taken up their case and would seek to bring the perpetrators to justice before the International Criminal Court.
Batoul’s father took the chance on the phone to seek to reassure his daughter.
“I was telling her that your situation is all over the media, we won’t let you down,” he recounted.
Since Batoul’s disappearance, in an effort to shield her, he had been warning her abductors via social media against forcing her into a marriage
During the call, she attempted to reassure him that this had not happened, but instead revealed a window into the violation that had already occurred.
“She said, ‘Dad, don’t worry, they had me take off my clothes and took pictures and everything is okay,’” he recounted.
“At this point, my wife jumped into the conversation. She said, ‘we don’t trust them, when you come back to us we want to make sure you are okay and checked mentally and physically.’”
As the conversation continued, the parents learned that not only did Batoul have no recollection of their only meeting, but she did not remember she had been recorded walking down the boardwalk of Jableh after her disappearance, wearing a black head-to-toe veil, in a video widely circulated as purported proof that she was freely going about her new life as a convert.
The parents believe the blanks in her memory mean she was drugged to cooperate through these appearances.
As it became clear the call was not going as intended, Batoul’s side of the phone hung up.
When Batoul’s parents tried to call back, the number was out of service.
Then, the conversation moved to strictly text messages, with the person writing on behalf of Batoul imploring her mother to return home with her younger sister — but without her father.
“My wife responded, ‘Why so they can kidnap us too?’ The other side replied and said, ‘But mama, I’m not kidnapped.’”
“Her mother said, ‘You are in the hands of kidnappers, you’re between those thugs and they are writing on your behalf. The other side replied, ‘No mama, I’m alone and I’m the one writing.’”
“We were sure from that moment that she was not the one writing,” the father told CSI.
“My daughter her entire life has called her mom ‘Rourou — not mama’. From that moment, we knew it was not her.”
A team of UN experts assembled by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights last year flagged a phenomenon of “targeted abductions and disappearances” of Alawite women and girls after Syria’s new Sunni Islamist government, led by a former al Qaeda commander, swept to power.
Minister of Social Affairs Hind Kabawat, the only woman and one of the few Christians in Syria’s new government, did not respond to queries regarding Batoul’s case when contacted by Whatsapp or by email to her ministry.
Batoul’s parents’ decision to fight for her release has put them on the path of no return.
Days after seeing their daughter for the last time, they were forced to flee not only their home, but the country, as a manhunt had begun.
“I have real estate in Syria, land, cars, I have dear friends, family members. I will leave all of this for the fingernail of my daughter,” the father said.
He continued, “we only have our pride and dignity. I spent two decades raising my daughter, they have no right to take her, so I will do whatever it takes to bring her back.”
