BAB AL-HAWA: A 54-year-old Argentinian woman who was lured into war-wracked Syria two years ago on a marriage promise was finally on her way home on Saturday, a Syrian rebel official said.
History teacher Nancy Roxana Papa had accepted the invitation of a Syrian man she had met online three years earlier and traveled to Turkey in 2016, before entering Syria.
“She returned to Turkey on Saturday after the required legal documents... were completed” for her entry into Turkish territory, said Bassam Sahiouni, an official from the local rebel authority in Idlib province.
On October 30, the “Salvation Government” — set up in rebel-held Idlib by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) jihadist group — handed Papa over to the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a Turkish non-governmental organization, at the Bab Al-Hawa border post.
She then had to remain in Syria for over a month to await completion of administrative and legal procedures for her repatriation.
The Argentinian teacher had appeared on October 30 at a news conference organized by HTS at the border, where she thanked her country’s diplomatic services, the Turkish authorities and the “Salvation Government.”
“You saved my life,” she said that day, drying her tears after Sahiouni explained the circumstances of her misadventure.
Sahiouni had given an account of the teacher’s apparent ordeal at the news conference.
She met the man posing as her future husband in a hotel in Turkey and “he told her they would go to Syria to greet his parents,” the rebel official said.
She entered Syria illegally in 2016 and was immediately kidnapped by a gang that was waiting for her on the other side of the border and contacted her daughter to demand a ransom, Sahiouni said.
He added that she managed to escape from her captors after a year and survived in the war-torn area by staying with residents and moving from home to home.
The “Salvation Government” sought to address the case earlier this year and tried without success to contact Argentina’s foreign ministry, before the Humanitarian Relief Foundation eventually dealt with her situation, Sahiouni said.
Last year, HTS reunited a Belgian girl with her mother, after the death of the four-year-old’s father, a radicalized criminal who had entered Syria with the child in May 2017.
In February 2018, the same authorities handed over to Turkish officials two Canadian nationals who were held for several weeks after entering Syria for obscure family reasons.
Argentinian woman leaves Syria after two year ‘kidnap’ ordeal
Argentinian woman leaves Syria after two year ‘kidnap’ ordeal
- Nancy Roxana Papa had accepted the invitation of a Syrian man she had met online three years earlier
- She traveled to Turkey in 2016 before entering Syria
UN rights chief Shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
