A/HRC/35/15 27. Ms. Aljizawi highlighted that no female staff worked in the detention centres, which meant that sexual and gender-based violence started from the minute of arrest, continued during searches by security officials and did not end with the interrogation and torture sessions, during which the same techniques were used on male and female detainees. Many women had been detained with their children, who remained with their mothers in filthy conditions. One woman, Rania al-Abbasi, who had been detained in 2012, had disappeared with six of her children; all remained missing. 28. Ms. Aljizawi noted that dozens of women and girls had been held by terrorist organizations, including ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusrah, and had been forcibly recruited and forcibly married. Undisciplined militias operating in coordination with the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic had been involved in abductions and detentions. She was worried that, even if access to detention centres was to be granted, access would still not be given to secret detention centres run by militias. Farms, school and private properties had been used by militias as torture centres. Many women had been abducted by some of the militias and their bodies found thrown in the streets, particularly in Homs, in 2011, where Ms. Aljizawi had herself been involved in documenting such cases. 29. Ms. Aljizawi ended by saying that she had been released not because of the humanity or kindness of her captors but thanks to the solidarity of human rights defenders, who had launched a large support campaign that had reached the scary place where she was being held and had pressured the regime not to kill her. She added that, even if the mechanisms were slow, the international community had to persevere in its efforts to secure the release of women, children and men. 30. In his intervention, Mr. Al-Jilane spoke about the situation in areas such as Deir Ezzour, Raqqa, rural Aleppo and Idleb, which were known to the public for hosting extremists. He highlighted that those areas were home to nearly 3 million civilians and about 100,000 missing persons, including detainees. 31. During the second half of 2014, ISIL had taken control of Raqqa and had begun spreading terror among the civilian population. Abductions and executions had started spreading in order to eliminate any alternative system. ISIL expanded eastward and westward, controlling areas of rural Aleppo and large parts of Deir Ezzour governorate after months of confrontation with the Free Syrian Army, using safe passages provided through government-controlled areas that allowed them to expand their geographic control. 32. Not a single family in eastern Syrian Arab Republic had been spared from ISIL oppression. Every home counted a missing person or someone who had become a martyr at the hands of ISIL. ISIL was holding 8,653 civilians in captivity, including 1,081 children, who were tortured on a daily basis, including for acts such as smoking or not abiding by a strict dress code. Journalists and other detainees considered to be a threat to ISIL were systematically moved between secret detention centres where they faced harsh treatment. Some 1,380 children had gone missing from camps. Since the end of 2014, other groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusrah, Jabhat Fath al-Sham and, later, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, had held some 1,844 people in Idleb alone (1,138 civilians and dozens of Free Syrian Army elements) in Al-Aqab detention centre, which had become Jabhat al-Nusrah’s most notorious detention centre. 33. Mr. Al-Jilane added that the Syrian Democratic Forces had carried out ethnic cleansing campaigns that had affected entire villages in the northern rural areas of Raqqa over which it had taken control. It was holding 3,481 civilians in captivity, including 734 women and children. Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently had documented deaths resulting from torture committed in these areas. Some detainees had been transferred to government forces upon their request, within a framework of cooperation between the two parties. Like other militias, the Syrian Democratic Forces had arrested and forcibly recruited persons in areas under their control. Mr. Al-Jilane ended by emphasizing that, in the quest for accountability, there was a need to focus on the top of the pyramid and identify those who had unleashed all those extremist groups in 2011. 34. Mr. Darwish emphasized that, in addition to all the actors involved in detention and enforced disappearances listed by the panellists, government-affiliated local militias such as the National Defence Forces and other cross-border sectarian militias operated secret 7