Syrian regime’s thugs kidnap woman for protesting

The Flower of Medical School or the Flower of Damascus is the nickname of Yaman al-Qaderi, the 18-year-old girl who was abducted by the thugs of the Syrian regime three weeks ago for taking part in protests against President Bashar al-Assad. Her whereabouts remain unknown.

Qaderi, along with a male classmate, was abducted at the entrance to the Medical School where they both study, for taking part in anti-regime protests. Her classmate, however, was released shortly thereafter but she remains in detention at an unknown place.

The magnitude of the event and the way it serves as an indication of the brutality of the Syrian regime is demonstrated in the Facebook page dedicated to her which has so far attracted more than 13,000 members. There is also a website called “The Syrian Revolution Against Bashar al-Assad”, both of which declared today the “Tuesday of Freedom to Yaman al-Qaderi” and vowed to spare no effort to release her.

On another dissident website called Syria al-Mondasa, Arabic for “Sneaky Syria” in reference to the word used to label protestors who are viewed as traitors, an eye witness writes the details of Qaderi’s abduction.

According to the witness, 25 cars loaded with regime thugs, also known in colloquial Arabic and particularly in Syria in as “Shabeeha,” stopped at the Medical School on November 2.

“They got out of the cars with stun guns and locked the gates of the campus then started violently dispersing students who were taking part in an anti-regime protest,” wrote the witness.

“They then arrested 12 students, five male and seven female, and locked them up in one of the university buildings.”

The witness adds that students were infuriated by the arrest of their colleagues so they rallied the following day in front of the building where those arrested were detained and demanded their immediate release.

Yaman Qaderi was one of the protestors and it was then that she and her colleague were arrested after the protest was violently crushed with the aid of employees at the university.

Another eye witness adds that 10 of the regime’s thugs took Qaderi and started beating her up brutally.

“She kept screaming and crying while one of those thugs, a woman, was standing there watching her and smiling,” the witness wrote on the website.

The comments on the website demonstrate the support Qaderi is getting and the growing indignation of Syrians at the atrocities committed by the regime.

“I feel we have boarded a time machine and gone back 610 years at the time of Tamerlane,” wrote a medical student.

“Our cities are besieged, our youth are getting killed and our girls are being abducted.”

Another colleague of Qaderi’s wrote, “How can my peaceful friend who is known for her ethics and comes from a very good family be a member of the armed gangs the regime claims the revolutionaries belong to?”

According to information available online, Qaderi’s family lives in Riyadh and she came to Damascus to enroll in the medical school.

(This article was translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid)