The exceptions: Prisoners of conscience languish in Idlib prisons

IDLIB — “Your prisons have been dissolved,” Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa proclaimed during his speech at the launch ceremony of the country’s new, post-Assad visual identity on July 3. But even as he hailed the “victory of the revolution” and the emptying of the former regime’s prisons, prisoners of conscience continued to languish in northwestern Syria—held in the prisons of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the faction al-Sharaa led in Idlib. 

 

Fatima al-Abboud knows those prisons well. Two weeks before al-Sharaa’s speech, she made her way to Idlib’s Harem Central Prison to visit her husband, 41-year-old Abdulrazzaq Masri, who has been held for nearly a year. Masri is accused of belonging to the international Islamist political party Hizb al-Tahrir, which opposes HTS, and is among dozens of prisoners of conscience held in its prisons under a variety of charges.

 

Between 2015 and 2024, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) documented the arbitrary detention of a large number of people by HTS in its areas of influence, Ayman Hoda Menem, the director of SCM’s legal office, told Syria Direct. Some were detained after photographing anti-HTS demonstrations or sit-ins by families of detainees, while others expressed critical opinions of the group on social media or were accused of dealing with “hostile” parties such as the US-led international coalition, he explained. 

 

Hizb al-Tahrir, as a transnational party that aims to bring about an Islamic caliphate by non-military means, “opposes any ruling authority, and its activities could pose security risks more than ideological ones,” Syrian researcher Orabi Orabi told Syria Direct. Still, “the party’s detainees must be released, while limiting their activities,” he said.

 

Regardless of the broad controversy surrounding the party, including among Syrians, “so long as its members present an idea or political vision and express their views by peaceful means, they are prisoners of conscience,” lawyer Ghazwan Koronfol, who lives in Turkey, said. 

 

Al-Abboud visits her husband once every 35 days for 15 minutes. During her visit on June 16, Masri told her detainees learned of the release of Assad regime officers held in Idlib prisons since 2012 and 2013. He said they asked the Harem prison director “what about us,” to which he responded “if the sheikh [al-Sharaa] wishes, he will release you, and if he wishes you to remain, we will keep you here,” al-Abboud recounted.

 

During the same visit, al-Abboud asked to meet with her husband face to face, “without a separation barrier,” because her foot was broken and she had trouble standing. They refused, though “whoever has connections enters without a barrier,” she wrote in a Facebook post. 

 

Last December, al-Abboud and other relatives of detainees in Idlib prisons demonstrated in Aleppo city’s Saadallah al-Jabiri Square to demand the release of their loved ones. “The authorities detained me and eight women who were with me. I was released 13 days later,” she told Syria Direct. “I was pregnant with my daughter, Amal al-Sham, who is now seven months old.” 

 

Belonging to Hizb al-Tahrir

 

Masri was arrested on September 8, 2024 at an oil press in the city of Jisr al-Shughour, his hometown in western Idlib. He was held in a prison there for a week, during which he was tortured, al-Abboud said, then transferred to Sarmada prison. From there he was moved again, to al-Maasra prison in the northern Idlib town of Qah, before finally ending up in Harem. 

 

It was not his first arrest. Masri was detained in 2019 and held for seven months, then again starting in May 2023 for 11 months. Each time, the charge was belonging to Hizb al-Tahrir, his wife said. 

 

 

Abdo al-Dalli, a member of Hizb al-Tahrir’s media office, confirmed that Masri is one of 38 men detained for belonging to the party. The group includes men held since mid-2023, arrested during dawn raids on their homes or in police interceptions involving gunfire, he said. One is the head of the party’s media office, Ahmad al-Haj Abdulwahhab, who was previously detained by the Assad regime in Saydnaya, the notorious military prison outside Damascus.

 

Al-Dalli stressed that the party members are “prisoners of conscience” who have been “forbidden from hiring a lawyer, and have not been brought before an investigating judge.” HTS prisons in Idlib “are not subject to human rights oversight, and medical and food services for detainees are very poor,” he added. 

 

The detainees were arrested under the category of a “sultani sentence” or “emiri detention,” a form of “arbitrary arrest known by this name in Idlib,” al-Dalli said. “No clear charges were brought against them, but they had called for mobilizing fronts against the Assad regime.”

 

Arbitrary arrests and disappearance

 

Abdulqader Toubal has had no word of his son, Ahmad Toubal, since December 12, 2016. Ahmad has been “forcibly disappeared, while Assad’s criminals are free,” Toubal told Syria Direct, appealing to Syrian authorities for any information about his son’s fate. 

 

Ahmad was a commander in the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) 51st Brigade when he had a disagreement with a security commander from Jabhat al-Nusra (the precursor of HTS) who demanded food baskets Ahmad planned to distribute in the southern Idlib town of Maarat al-Numan. He did not comply, and “disappeared” after finishing the distribution, said his father, who now supports his son’s three children.

 

Toubal knows of two of his son’s friends in the FSA who were detained and held by HTS under similar circumstances. One of them, Muhammad Abdulbaset Khashan, also disappeared. The other, Ibrahim Khashan, died in prison.

 

Like so many relatives of detained and disappeared Syrians, Toubal has fallen victim to extortion while searching for any information about his son. When one individual demanded $5,000 for information, he mortgaged his house to raise the money, to no avail. “I lost the money and didn’t learn anything about his fate,” Toubal told Syria Direct. 

 

The only scrap of information he has received came from “a detainee who was with him in Shahin Prison,” located in the building of Idlib Central Prison, who said “my son was tortured and suffered from a stomach ailment.” 

 

In October 2018, HTS detained media activist Jumaa Hamada and his uncle Muhammad—the head of the local council in the northern Aleppo village of Kafr Hamra—during a raid of the latter’s home in the village of Tarmanin in the Idlib countryside, Omar Hamada, Jumaa’s father and Muhammad’s brother, told Syria Direct. 

 

In the years since the two were arrested, Hamada has filed several legal complaints in Sarmada courts to “reveal their fate,” but received no information. Two years ago, an “HTS emir said they were both killed shortly after their arrest, without revealing the burial site,” he said. 

 

The uncle and nephew were arrested following “clashes between the [Turkish-backed] National Liberation Front and HTS” in Kafr Hamra, Hamada added. The two “are not associated with any military faction, and had nothing to do with the clashes,” he said.

 

 

Three former detainees in HTS prisons Syria Direct spoke to said they were charged with incitement against HTS and were only released after signing a pledge not to participate in new protests, under threat of harsher penalties. Hizb al-Tahrir detainees, who refused to sign such a pledge, remained in detention.

 

They said they were subjected to serious violations, including torture from the moment of arrest and being held in cramped solitary cells or overcrowded dormitories, which caused chronic illnesses for some. None underwent real trials. 

 

Extensive anti-HTS protests broke out in Idlib in early 2024, following the torture and death of a member of the Jaish al-Ahrar faction while in the faction’s custody. Demonstrators demanded an end to violations in HTS prisons, the release of detainees, local reforms and the resignation of al-Sharaa, who led HTS under his nom de guerre, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. 

 

In recent years, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) identified at least 46 permanent detention centers affiliated with HTS in northwestern Syria, according to a 2022 report. At the time, it estimated there were 2,327 forcibly disappeared people held in these centers, most of whom were subjected to some form of torture. It also found at least 116 temporary detention centers where investigations and interrogations were conducted. 

 

With the fall of the Assad regime, and the absence of any real legal, administrative or military status for HTS—which was formally dissolved in January—“its detention centers are illegal and must be closed immediately and all detainees released,” Menem of SCM said. Any criminal cases should be “referred to the Public Prosecution Office, which alone has the authority to decide on detention,” he added.

 

Under the March 2025 constitutional declaration—an interim constitution to govern Syria’s post-Assad political transition—the army and weapons are limited to the state, and no other party may establish “military or paramilitary formations” (Article 9). Those accused of crimes have the right to litigate and defend themselves, and are presumed innocent until a final judicial ruling is issued (Article 17). Torture and arbitrary detention is also prohibited (Article 18).

 

Paradoxes of civil peace

 

“Families of the detainees are living in a painful reality, with the release of Assad criminals such as Fadi Saqr, who in turn mediated for the release of hundreds of those accused of war crimes,” al-Dalli said. “Meanwhile, prisoners of conscience are still languishing in prisons.”

 

“This discrimination has left families asking the state to treat their children as it treated the shabiha of the former regime,” he added.

 

Activists have denounced the continued detention of dozens of people in Idlib for previously rejecting HTS policies, while releasing those accused of crimes in the name of preserving civil peace. 

 

In a brief statement at a press conference held at the Ministry of Information in Damascus on June 10, Hassan Soufan, a member of the Civil Peace Committee, said more detainees would soon be released in Idlib, without mentioning their background or alleged crimes.

 

Syria Direct reached out to the Syrian Ministry of Justice for official comment regarding detainees in the prisons of HTS, which forms the core of the new Syrian administration, but received no response by the time of publication. 

 

“Any sustainable peace in Syria requires transitional justice that ensures accountability and justice for the victims and prevents impunity, while rejecting selective forgiveness that reproduces injustice,” Menem said. This includes “transparently opening detention files and conducting fair trials in accordance with international standards, as an essential step towards ending the conflict and building a secure future for all Syrians.” 

 

France-based Syrian lawyer Zaid al-Azm said the detention of prisoners of conscience in Idlib for peacefully expressing their opinions—whether political, social or religious—represents a clear form of arbitrary detention as defined in international law, pointing to Articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Syria is a party to.

 

Preventing detainees from hiring defense lawyers and holding them without trial also explicitly violates the right to a defense, a cornerstone of any fair legal system. This places legal and ethical responsibilities on the new transitional authorities, al-Azm told Syria Direct. 

 

While the current Syrian authorities place their focus on those detained by the former Assad regime, the relatives of detainees still held in Idlib continue to call for the release of their loved ones. 

 

Al-Abboud is among them, balancing caring for her five children with  calling for the freedom of her husband and other detainees. Another demonstration was held in the Aleppo countryside city of al-Bab on June 26, as well as in the city of al-Safira in southern Aleppo.

 

Her hope is that Damascus will respond, and that she will see her children reunited with their father. 

 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.