IDLIB — Suhail Zubair, a pseudonym, is one of many journalists who have fled the city of al-Bab the northeastern countryside of Aleppo, fearing for his safety and that of his family. He was threatened by the Syrian opposition factions loyal to Turkey after he reported on prisons run by these groups in the cities of al-Rai and Afrin, where thousands of detainees are held.

Zubair told Al-Monitor that he has reported for several local and Arab satellite stations. But constant threats over his investigative journalism pushed him to flee with his family a year ago to Turkey. There, he paid some $60,000 to get them smuggled to Sweden.

“It all began in al-Bab when I obtained private information from former prisoners in al-Rai prison about the [Turkish-backed] factions detaining dozens of Kurdish women of various ethnicities from the city of Afrin. The women have been in prison since the factions took over the city in 2018. They are not even tried and are subject to gang rapes by prison officials, some even tortured to death,” Zubair said.

Zubair said, “I met with the families of 10 Kurdish female prisoners from Afrin. These families showed me pictures of the imprisoned women, some of whom were minors. The families told me that when the factions took control of Afrin, these imprisoned girls were barely 10 years old. Their fate remains unknown.”