In the fourth year after the occupation of Afrin, kidnappings by mercenaries loyal to Turkey continue. The so-called civil police abducted 49-year-old Ibrahim Mele Mihemed and 48-year-old Doğan Mihemed Mele Mihemed from Afrin to an unknown location. Abducted persons are often taken to torture centres run by the mercenary groups and are only released in exchange for high ransom payments. In the torture centres, agents of the Turkish secret service MIT are actively involved in the torture and thus try to extort information about the ongoing resistance in Afrin.

With names like "civil police", Turkey tries to give the mercenary groups a legal veneer. In reality, however, they are a conglomerate of jihadists and Turkish right-wing extremists who compete with each other for ransoms, loot and protection money and operate their own torture prisons under the control of the MIT. The so-called "civil police" have been given control tasks inside Afrin in particular. At the same time, the al-Qaida offshoot HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) is stationed there to a large extent.

According to the human rights organisation Afrin-Syria, 346 people were abducted by the occupying forces and their mercenary militias in the first half of 2022. Among them are 30 women. At least 18 people were murdered in this context in the first half of the year. More up-to-date statistics are not yet available.