A/HRC/25/65 Without a trace 26. Defectors who participated in mass arrests as well as survivors revealed that in the majority of cases, the officers in charge of the initial arrest took the abductees to the premises of their respective security or military branches. Despite the organised nature of the arrests and detentions, authorities often failed to record the personal details of detainees, including those who died in detention, making it difficult to trace them and inform their families. The family of a person arrested in Idlib in September 2011 attempted to determine his whereabouts. The interviewee described how “Wherever they searched, the authorities said that his name was not recorded”. 27. A defector told of a mass arrest in Jisr Al Shoughour, Idlib in June 2011, where those detained were taken to a school that was used as an ad hoc detention facility. There, detainees were subjected to painful and humiliating physical treatment. Their names were never registered rendering any attempts to determine their whereabouts futile. In late August 2011, officers of the Military Security in Latakia arrested four family members of an interviewee and took them to an unknown location. Three weeks later, a young man who was arrested together with the interviewee’s cousins informed him that his relatives had been transferred to the military hospital of Latakia. Upon inquiry, it was discovered that their names never appeared in the hospital’s registry. Anti-Government armed groups 28. In 2013, specific anti-Government armed groups adopted a practice of hostagetaking, targeting civilians perceived to be supporting the Government, human rights defenders, journalists and religious leaders. The emergence of a pattern of abductions and arbitrary deprivation of liberty has characterized the ever-growing presence of certain armed groups, particularly in northern Syria. 29. The fear of such kidnappings and hostage-takings has gripped the civilian populations living under the control of certain armed groups. The perpetrators seize, detain and threaten to kill their victims in order to coerce a third party – whether the families of the kidnapped, their communities or the Syrian authorities – to fulfill their conditions for the release of the hostage. Such acts, motivated by material gain and extortion, intimidate and coerce the families of the kidnapped and their communities. 30. Hostages are taken with the intent to instrumentalise their liberty and security for ransom or prisoner exchange. Such offenses leave families in a state of uncertainty regarding the whereabouts of their relatives, but do not amount to enforced disappearances as the fate of the victims is not denied or concealed. In the current context in Syria, such conduct may amount to war crimes. 31. Information collected in recent months indicates that opposition armed groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS) have taken control of territory in northern Syria and begun to adopt practices, such as incommunicado detention, that may lead to disappearances. In one incident, armed men believed to be members of ISIS were reported to have abducted two civilians on grounds of non-adherence to their interpretation of Islamic dress code. The group later denied holding them in captivity. The whereabouts of the detainees remain unknown. 40