Even Outside Syria, Refugees Fear Kidnappers

A Syrian man at a hospital in Antakya, Turkey, covers his face during an interview on June 9, 2011. The man said he was hiding his identity for fear of Syria's secret service

Ramy al-Dow, 21, draws his thin-striped V-neck sweater up to his neck and crosses his arms over his chest in a futile bid to shield himself from the piercing chill cloaking this mountainous southern Turkish village overlooking the Syrian border. He's noticeably on edge, despite the fact that on this night he's in a safe house. Three generations of women sit in the courtyard outside, shelling buckets of pomegranates harvested from their nearby fields. Ramy's cousin Mahmoud al-Dow, 16, stands watch on the street. "Just in case," Ramy says.

The young Syrian refugees have spent the past two weeks sleeping outdoors, in mosques, in people's courtyards, in the fields along the border. They are afraid of being kidnapped by spies and sympathizers working for Syrian President Bashar Assad's ruthless regime and being taken across the border by force. They want their real names published in the event that if they are captured they will not disappear into the nameless, faceless pit of victims, but that somebody may ask after them. Their fears are not entirely unwarranted. (See photos of Syrians fleeing into Turkey.)

There's a palpable change in the border area since the heady, bustling days this summer when the sleepy village of Guvecci was inundated with refugees. Activists who swaggered around town have now moved deeper into Turkey, into the city of Antakya, where they keep a low profile. Gone are the days of illegally trekking across the Turkish border into Syria unimpeded by the security forces of either country, and of the hopeful optimism that the Damascus regime would soon fall. It's all been replaced with a sharp fear that Assad's reach extends well beyond his borders. Although Turkey pursues a foreign policy hostile to Syria, has opened its arms to thousands of Syrian refugees and housed them in a network of well-maintained camps, many of the fugitives still feel it is not a safe haven.

Human-rights groups are working to document the cases of Syrian refugees in countries bordering Syria, including Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, who are being kidnapped and forced back across the border. Some are reportedly sold by mercenaries, according to Syrian activists, others have been picked up by roving Syrian mukhabarat (intelligence and secret police) agents. In Lebanon — which shook off Syrian occupation in 2005 but is now firmly back in the Syrian sphere of influence — the country's top cop, Ashraf Rifi (an anti-Syrian stalwart), recently claimed that Syria's embassy in Lebanon was behind the kidnapping of three Syrian activists, the Jassem brothers, in Beirut, and that personnel from Rifi's own Internal Security Forces aided the alleged kidnapping. The Syrian embassy in Beirut denied any involvement.

Amnesty International's Syria researcher, Neil Sammonds, says several cases have been reported to the rights group in Turkey. "We can't verify them," he says, "but there's one — the case of Hussein Harmoush — we have written to the Turkish government about. But that was only the week before last, so we don't have a response yet. And we raised the alleged cases of three other people as well." (See TIME's video of Turkey's Muslim minority.)

Colonel Hussein Harmoush was one of the earliest and highest-ranking officers to defect from the Syrian army. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances on Aug. 29, before surfacing on Syrian state TV two weeks later, retracting his claims of leading the Syrian Free Officers Movement and insisting that he returned to Syria of his own free will. He'd been staying in a Turkish refugee camp along with his wife Gofran Hejazi and their four children. It's unclear if he was picked up in Turkey or Syria (which he reportedly frequented, according to people who spoke with him daily). Still, his wife lays the blame for her husband's capture squarely on Turkey.

Although Turkish authorities denied TIME's request to meet Hejazi, we reached her by phone. She says her husband was in regular contact — both on the phone and in person — with an Arabic-speaking Turkish man known as Abu Mohammad. Hejazi, 33, said she had met the Turk several times. Abu Mohammad called Harmoush before his disappearance, promising to provide weapons to the Syrian revolutionaries and to help the colonel ferry them across the border. "I heard this. I was near my husband during this call," she says. Abu Mohammad reportedly insisted that Harmoush keep the plan to himself, and insisted he meet him as soon as possible. According to other Harmoush family members, on Aug. 29, the colonel left the refugee camp to meet the mysterious Turk. That was the last time he was seen in the country.

"In my opinion, the Turks played a role," Hejazi says. "I think they pay lip service to the revolution, but under the table they are making deals with the Syrian regime." Harmoush, she alleges, "was under surveillance [by the Turks] — even his phone, his Internet conversations. That's what Internet activists in Antakya and Ankara told me. So how could the Turks not know anything about his disappearance?"

The Harmoush family submitted details about Mohammad, including his cell-phone number, to Turkish authorities, but according to Hejazi, the Turks have told her that they do not have any suspects in the case. Now she fears that the same people who captured her husband can harm her and her children. "I want to apply for political asylum in an Arab country. Please, can you get my message out? I am not safe here. I am living in fear, not for myself, but for my children. A mother cannot see her children harmed. Look at what happened to my husband. He thought he was safe here."

Many exiled Syrian activists now live in the shadows. Mohammad Fezo, 31, hasn't left his barely furnished rented home in Antakya for more than two months. When he does venture outdoors, he's accompanied by several family members, lest he "disappear." "Ziad," another activist, has lived in three different places in Antakya since August. He's looking to move again, in part because he's running out of money, and in part because he and his activist roommates have recently noticed Syrians they don't know following them. "It has scared us," says Ziad, 26, a raised semicircular scar under his left eye a permanent reminder of a brush with Syrian security forces during a demonstration in his hometown, the coastal city of Latakia. "I've received threats, both direct and indirect, from Syrians here in Turkey," says Fezo. "It's not safe for us, they can reach us anywhere."

Read about Syrians fleeing into Turkey.