Nora looks into the camera, her baby on her lap. She looks thin, her hair and eyebrows have been shaved off and she has scars on her face. The first pictures of the woman, taken after her release from captivity, were immediately spread on social media.

Nora — her real name has been withheld for security and privacy reasons — is one of dozens of women from the Syrian Alawite minority thought to have been kidnapped. She has since left the country.

Nora says she was held in a basement for around a month, where she was physically and psychologically brutalized. She was in the coastal city of Jableh, with her 11-month-old baby, on the way to an aid center when she was stopped by a car with Idlib license plates, filled with masked men. They asked her where she came from and when she said she was Alawite, she was dragged into the car and blindfolded.

"Every day I was abused and beaten, so much so that I lost consciousness," Nora told DW. While imprisoned, her baby was taken away from her and she was told she should sign a marriage contract. "I refused to do so, I'm already married," she explained. "After that they treated me with even more brutality."

Photos of her beatings were sent to her family as a way to blackmail them into sending ransom money. After her family paid a large ransom, Nora was set free. Today she lives outside of Syria and is being treated for serious gynecological problems.

Nora's story has been repeated elsewhere. News agency Reuters has reported on other abductions of Alawite women and conducted detailed interviews with families of the missing women. "Detailed interviews with the families of 16 of the missing women and girls found that seven of them are believed to have been kidnapped, with their relatives receiving demands for ransoms ranging from $1,500 to $100,000," Reuters reported. "There has been no........

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