Rehab al-Allawi, a Damascus resident originally from Deir al-Zor, was an engineering student at Damascus University before the Syrian Revolution. Rehab was 25 years old when the Raids Brigade, a special raids unit of the military police, arrested her on January 17, 2013. The unit came to her family’s home in Damascus where she was arrested. According to Rehab’s brother Hamza, Rehab worked with a loose network of activists where she assisted internally displaced persons who had fled Homs. 

After her arrest, Rehab’s family sought information through personal contacts within the Syrian 

government. They paid over US$18,000 to various officials in the Syrian military and security services to gain information about Rehab and to secure her release.

After a few months, a Syrian brigadier-general told the family Rehab had died of a stroke. Rehab’s other brother Bassam asked to see her grave, and in March 2013, an officer accompanied him to al-Najha cemetery on the outskirts of Damascus. They held a memorial service for Rehab in Jordan soon after, and another in Saudi Arabia, where the two brothers live, in June 2013.

The same month as Rehab’s second memorial, an acquaintance who knew Syria’s Justice Minister called the family and told them Rehab was still alive. Several months later, in October 2013, a military security officer reached out to the family and requested $90,000 to secure Rehab’s release: $50,000 as payment for his services and $40,000 to secure her safe exit from Syria to Turkey. Her older brother, Bassam met and paid an intermediary in Istanbul. After the money was transferred, the officer told Rehab’s family that she had left Syria for Lebanon.

In March 2015, after the Caesar photographs were published online, a cousin called the family and asked if Rehab’s photo might be among those released. “She looks just like Rehab,” the cousin said. She was the only published photograph of a woman, among the Caesar photographs.