Mariam Ajjan was living in the village of Yalda, which, at the time, was under the control of the Free Syrian Army and besieged by the Syrian Army. On November 15, 2013, the Syrian Army agreed to allow the evacuation of all the civilians not directly participating in hostilities. At the time, Mariam was two months pregnant.
On November 15, 2013, while they were trying to evacuate Yalda, Mariam Ajjan and other members of her family were stopped at a checkpoint controlled by the Syrian Army located in in Al Hajar Al Aswad. Members of the Syrian Army, wearing military uniforms, arrested Mariam Ajjan and the other members of the family and took them to an unknown location.
Since her arrest, Mariam Ajjan’s family has gone every year – the last time in May 2019 – to enquire about her fate and whereabouts to the military police station in Qaboun, Damascus Governorate, as well as to the Criminal Court in Damascus, but to no avail.
At the beginning of February 2018, a former detainee informed Mariam Ajjan’s family that they had seen Mariam in one of the detention centres run by the Syrian authorities and that “she was alive”. However, the former detainee did not mention the name of the detention centre for fear of arrest.
