In August of 2019, Hasan Kassab, a 27-year-old civil society activist and medical student, married his sweetheart Rawan in Raqqa, Syria. “There were 350 people at our wedding, there was dancing and singing. We had so much fun,” Kassab said, recalling their party at the popular Greek House restaurant on the banks of the Euphrates River.

Video footage from the event shows the groom with a neatly trimmed beard in a dark gray suit and pink tie, his hands nervously clasped before him. The bride leans toward him smiling. She wears a white lace dress with gauze sleeves. A crystal-studded tiara crowns her dark hair. Family members from Kassab’s al-Bosaraya tribe and Rawan’s Baytra tribe mill around with joyful expressions.

Their euphoria was short-lived. The next day at 6 p.m., armed militants from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) raided their home in Tabqa, 25 miles west of Raqqa. “They told me, ‘You are with ISIS,’" Kassab said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

“They began hitting me, and my wife started screaming. They beat and kicked her, too, before handcuffing me and hauling me off in a white van,” Kassab told Al-Monitor in a telephone interview from Novi Sad, Serbia, where he studies medicine.