A video of a Syrian man brutally torturing a young girl, barely nine years old, has sparked widespread outrage on social media in Syria in recent hours. Users have called for the punishment of Ahmad Ibrahim, the husband of the child's late mother, who was seen beating the girl with a stick while she was tied up, screaming, and crying, as shown in the widely circulated video since Wednesday.
The girl, named Shahd Nassar, is an orphan and was living with Ibrahim, who continued to torture her in his home in the town of Fouah, located in the rural Idlib province, before she was moved to the city of Afrin about 40 days before the video emerged, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In the horrifying footage, the child is seen counting the blows after being forced to do so by the attacker. The number of strikes reached 50, based on the recorded video.
The reasons behind Ibrahim's abuse of the girl, whose deceased father hails from the Ghouta region of Damascus, have not yet been revealed. Although the Syrian Observatory reported that the girl was taken to her relatives in Afrin, activists mentioned that Shahd was transferred recently following the controversy sparked by the video amid an increase in instances of violence and horrific crimes against children and women in areas controlled by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham.
Syrian news outlets reported that the video was recorded by Shahd's mother, which led to the arrest of Ibrahim, who comes from the rural Damascus area. The security apparatus of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which controls the Idlib province in northwestern Syria, arrested the man accused of torturing the child.
It is worth noting that this incident is not the first of its kind, as cases of domestic violence in Syria have surged, according to the Syrian Observatory, which also documented an incident on April 11, where a member of the so-called "Syrian National Army," supported by Turkey, killed his sister under the pretext of "honor killing" in the rural area of Afrin in northern Aleppo, which has been under the control of Turkey and groups supported by it since early 2018.
