A/HRC/28/69 fighters held by the Government. The fate of the women and children, abducted by the group but not appearing on the video, is unknown. 101. Anti-Government armed groups have kidnapped individuals and held them hostage in violation of common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, amounting to a war crime. Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham 102. On 29 May 2014, ISIS in Minbeij abducted 153 Kurdish school children, boys aged 13 and 14 years, as they returned to Ayn al-Arab (Kobane) from Aleppo city. While 15 boys were released on 28 June as part of a prisoner exchange for ISIS members held by the YPG, a further prisoner exchange between the two armed groups, intended to take place on 18 July, failed. The situation then shifted from being one of hostage-taking as ISIS held the remaining children for the purposes of indoctrination, before releasing them in groups in August and September 2014. C. Arbitrary arrest Government forces 103. Unlike previous reporting periods, where arbitrary arrests by Government forces occurred at checkpoints, during ground raids and during other military operations, the arbitrary arrests documented between July 2014 and January 2015 occurred almost exclusively at checkpoints. 104. With ground searches now a rarity, checkpoints are the principal point of direct contact between Government forces and those living outside of its area of control. They are regarded with great fear by civilians, particularly those whose identification documents indicate they hail from restive areas or who have injuries, whether conflict or non-conflict related. 105. Some refugees emphasised that fear of arrest at Government checkpoints motivated their flight from Syria. One women left as her eldest son entered his adolescence, fearful that he was now old enough to be vulnerable to arrest at checkpoints. 106. Those arrested at checkpoints are almost exclusively males between the ages of 15 and 60 years. The arrests and detention of men of fighting age is an indication of arbitrariness. The circumstances of many of the arrests indicate that they were conducted on discriminatory grounds, such as the religious or geographic origin of persons. 107. On 25 July 2014, a man was travelling from Damascus city to Lebanon when he was stopped at a military checkpoint. He had been arrested previously, in 2011, for participating in demonstrations. His whereabouts are currently unknown. In March 2014, a man attempted to leave the besieged area of eastern Ghouta to travel to Damascus. He had not links to armed groups but was held at a Government checkpoint outside Hammouriyah (Rif Damascus) and has not been heard from since. There have been multiple accounts of arrests of young men travelling between Damascus and Dara’a cities in 2014. 108. In late August, an elderly man, aged 72 years, and his daughter attempted to leave the eastern Ghouta so that he could receive urgent medical treatment. As the area is besieged, Government forces were not allowing ambulances or medical aid into the area. Their taxi was stopped at an identified checkpoint near Douma (Rif Damascus) and the elderly man was arrested. His daughter’s pleas that her father needed medical attention went unheeded. His whereabouts are unknown. 109. There were multiple accounts of adult men being arrested at checkpoints in Homs and Hama governorates. In mid-August, a young man was arrested at Mallouk checkpoint in the Homs countryside, after he had been been forcibly return to Syria from Jordan. In 39