ISTANBUL, Turkey—Sitting inside a coffee shop in Istanbul, Turkey, on a rainy morning in December, Hiba Brais remembers the day in May 2011 that her father was arrested. She was alone at home with her mother in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, when she heard knocks on the door. Hiba went to open it thinking it was one of the neighbors. Instead, she found herself facing several security officers, who pushed her aside and swiftly entered the house demanding to know where her father was.
Hiba’s father, who prefers not to be named for this article, had a successful business selling air conditioning equipment, often traveling to Jordan, Qatar, Iran, Lebanon, Cyprus and Greece for his work. She asked the men what they wanted with him. “Shut up,” she recalled them replying. “It is none of your business.” Shortly after they left, they caught up with her father, then 47 years old, at his nearby office. They took him, two of his cars and whatever money and gold they found in the office safe.
At the time, Syria was undergoing massive political upheaval. With authoritarian rulers having already fallen in Tunisia and Egypt, and anti-regime protests exploding across the region, Syrians all over the country had taken to the streets in March 2011 to protest against then-President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian rule.