International Day of the Disappeared 2018

Sahirah Ali from Iraq

Sahirah’s husband, Niama Ali Jasim, was a deputy officer in the Iraqi Army. He was training in the Speicher Camp on 12 June 2014 when he called his wife and told her, “there will be a holiday and I will be back home.” Those were his last words. Later, Sahirah was informed that Da’esh militants […]

A mother of five from Syria

A mother of five describes how her husband has been missing for five years, since he left Ghouta in Syria. She has tried to find out what happened to him but she has not been able to obtain any information that would guide her to wherever he may be. “Not having the presence of a […]

Mustafa Shihab from Iraq

Mustafa’s brother, Murtaza, was a prisoner in the Badoush prison in Nineveh. On 9 June 2014, after the Da’esh attack, the guards fled and left the prisoners locked in their cells. Sunni and Shiite prisoners were customarily held separately, and when Da’esh occupied the prison, they arrested all the Shiite prisoners. “I was on the […]

A wife from Syria

A wife describes how her husband was arbitrarily arrested in their home on 25 August 2011 in the Damascus suburb of Daraya. After he went missing, she left with her children for Lebanon, where the family now live. “In his absence,” she says. “I cry all the time”. She tries to remain connected to the […]

Noura Ghazi from Syria

Noura’s fiancé, Bassel, was arrested on 15 March 2012 in Damascus, Syria, when “it was two weeks before our wedding.” After ten months, Noura was able to locate the prison where Bassel was being held and they were married in the prison. She visited him there for the next three years. Then he disappeared again, […]

Josip Dreznjak from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Josip’s parents were killed in the village of Grabovica in Herzegovina in 1993 and their bodies were hidden. “In 1994 an exchange of mortal remains was arranged. Among the eleven bags that that were provided I identified incomplete remains of my parents, and buried them for their final rest,” Josip says. Years later, his father’s […]

Bakary Jamada from Gambia

Bakary’s friend Mustafa disappeared in Libya. “Mustafa and I decided to cross the Mediterranean together. We attempted to cross several times and we were unlucky, so he decided to go to another crossing point in Libya and this was the last time I heard from him. Mustafa was desperate. I still don’t know whether he […]

Tamem Ahmed from Iraq

Tamem Ahmed, a son of a secondary school principal in Mosul. One night in August 2014, his younger brother was driving their father’s car when he was stopped at a Da’esh checkpoint. “After searching the car, the militants found an Independent High Electoral Commission of Iraq identity card that belonged to one of the teachers […]

Farid Abdulla Aziz from Iraq

Farid Abdulla Aziz, a 53-year-old from Hawraman, Sulaymaniyah, fled with his family to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. When the war ended in 1988, his family returned to Iraq. Because Farid was married, he decided to stay in Iran. After five months, he received a letter from a relative saying his family had been captured […]

Graciela Perez Rodriguez from Mexico

Graciela is a mother and a human rights defender whose daughter, brother and three nephews disappeared in 2012 while they were traveling back to Tamaulipas in Mexico from the United States. “Since the day that I started searching, I have never stopped. I dedicated my life to searching for disappeared persons and defending the rights […]

A mother of eight from Syria

A mother of eight describes how her husband has been missing for four years since he was seized at a checkpoint as he was trying to reach Lebanon. She returned to Syria after three months to look for him, but he could not be found. She later heard that he had died but she believes […]

Zekija Avdibegovic from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Zekija’s husband and son went missing in the town of Ilijas near Sarajevo in 1992: “They were taken from home to the camp in the elementary school in Ilijas. They were there for about a month. On the night of 4 July 1992 they were taken away and since then I have had no information […]

Ingrid Gudmundsson from Sweden

Ingrid’s daughter Linda was 31 years old and pregnant when she disappeared in the Tsunami of 26 December 2004, in Khao Lak, Thailand. Linda’s father and her daughter Mira, just one year old, were also lost. They were all identified after seven months and Mira was identified by ICMP. Ingrid says, “It is nearly 14 […]

Maliaa Mohammed Rashid from Iraq

Maliaa Mohammed Rashid, a 65-year-old mother from Halabja, lost her son when he was 9 months old. She and her family took a path through the snowy mountains towards Iran after Halabja was bombarded with chemical weapons in March 1988. On her way out of the town, she was exposed to chemicals. Half conscious and […]

Fikret Bacic from Bosnia and Herzegovina

When the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina broke out, Fikret was working in Germany. Twenty-nine of his family members, including his two children, his first wife and his mother, were killed in the village of Zecovi near Prijedor on 25 July 1992. Their bodies have not yet been found. In 1998, Fikret returned to live […]

Maximina Hernández Maldonado from Mexico

13 Maximina’s son worked as a policeman in the municipality of Santa Catarina in Nuevo León, Mexico. On his way to work on 2 May 2007, he was taken in a van by armed men. “I am torn into pieces, I need to search for him, I want to be with my other children, and I […]

Šuhra Sinanović from Bosnia and Herzegovina

In July 1995, Šuhra and her family were refugees in Srebrenica. Šuhra still remembers her husband’s last words when Serb forces began their offensive on the UN protected zone of Srebrenica: “At the door leaving, he just said – take care of our children.” Together with her two children and her elderly father-in-law, Šuhra was […]

Nedeljko Mitrović from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Nedeljko’s son disappeared during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his whereabouts are still unknown. “My son Slaviša went missing on 13 September 1995 and I still wait for any information about his disappearance,” Nedeljko says. More than 20 years of daily uncertainty and waiting have affected Nedeljko’s health, yet “my work still keeps […]

Vian Bapir from Iraq

Vian Bapir, a 27-year old Yezidi woman, lost her husband and other family members in 2014, when they were fleeing from their village to Mount Sinjar and were captured by Da’esh militants. They had been told that if they raised a white flag and went back to their village, they would not be harmed. As […]