At the time of her arrest, Ms Abbasi’s children – Dima, Entisar, Naj, Alaa, Ahmed and Layan – were 14, 13, 11, eight, six and two years old respectively.
“They took Rania with the children and we have not heard anything about them since that day,” Naila said.
The family received only one update about the arrest, which came shortly after the arrest. They believe the family was being held in a prison in Damascus known as the Palestinian branch, which was run by Syrian intelligence.
The woman, who was released in 2013, told her family that she heard the children’s voices in the prison two weeks after her arrest.
Now that the prisoners have been released, their family members have visited the prisons to try to find them.
“We watch the news and see people released from prisons and watch videos to see if we can see them,” Naila said.
“But the prisons have opened and we haven’t seen Rania yet. It’s unbearable.”
“We’ve been waiting for this day for 13 years,” she added. “But our wounds are still as fresh as if it happened yesterday.”
