Full Name: Eva Dumani

Alternative Name: Sara

Case Status: Missing

Record ID#: 0155

*The names “Jane Doe”  and “John Doe” are English names used when the person’s true name is not known. If used above, the name refers to a person of unknown identity.

Date of Birth*: March 4, 2005
Birthplace: Albania
Age at the Time: 8
Age Group: Child
Biological Sex: Female
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Blue
Skin Complexion: Fair or Light
Shoe Size: Unknown
Ethnicity: White or Caucasian
Nationality: Albania
Languages Spoken: Albanian

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

Physical Build:

Height:

Weight

Distinguishing Marks:

• Unknown

Medical Condition: Unknown
Physical Abnormality: Unknown
Dental Condition: Unknown
Scars & Other Marks: Unknown
Piercings: Unknown
Tattoos: Unknown

Other Descriptors: Unknown

Clothing

• Unknown

Possessions:

• Unknown

Date of the Disappearance*: February 1, 2014

Description: Between 2012 and 2014, at least ninety Albanian radical Islamists abandoned their homeland to join the civil war raging in Syria. They did not go alone. Alongside them traveled wives and, in many cases, children—some twenty-three minors swept into a war not of their choosing. As the men fell in battle or were captured, their families were left adrift in hostile lands, often trapped in refugee or detention camps under the iron grip of radical factions or the watchful eye of local authorities. It was in such a grim landscape that two Albanian children, Endri and Eva Dumani, vanished from the world’s notice.

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Their journey into darkness began one cold morning in early 2014. Shkelzen Dumani, a construction worker turned Islamic State sympathizer, walked calmly through Tirana’s Rinas Airport, holding the hands of his six-year-old daughter Eva and eight-year-old son Endri. Their faces were innocent, unaware. Their travel documents were in order—falsified, yet convincing. Shkelzen told authorities he was traveling to manage family property abroad. To make the lie work, he had persuaded his ex-wife to sign a power of attorney, claiming it was for financial matters. In truth, it granted him permission to take the children across borders—permission she never knowingly gave.

No one questioned the story. Few suspected a father with two children could be running toward jihad.

Their mother had already rejected Shkelzen’s radical ideology, refused to raise her children under its shadow. A disagreement that had recently led to their divorce. So he left without her—on February 1, 2014, slipping out of the country with Eva and Endri, never to return.

The plan was precise. Shkelzen had purchased plane tickets for himself, the children, and two fellow jihadists. He relied on help from inside: an anti-terrorism officer he had befriended, who had promised smooth passage through airport security. On the day of departure, that officer was absent—but had arranged for a colleague to stand in his place.

And so, with the quiet complicity of corrupt hands, Shkelzen passed unchallenged through Rinas Airport. He and the children boarded the flight. There were no alarms, no last-minute interventions—only silence as they crossed into a new and terrible world.

It was the last time Albania saw them together.

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The seeds of Shkelzen Dumani’s radicalization were not sown in secret. Long before he boarded that plane, he had fallen under the influence of Bujar Hysa, a firebrand imam operating from the shadows of Tirana’s religious fringe. Hysa did more than preach ideology—he ran a recruitment cell, quietly grooming young men to take up arms in a foreign war. Eventually, Albanian authorities caught up with him. He was arrested and charged for organizing a terrorist network that had sent dozens to Syria, including Shkelzen.

But Hysa’s arrest came too late for Eva and Endri.

Their father had already vanished with them, aided not only by radical clerics but by the quiet betrayal of state officials. Two police officers had helped smooth his exit, looking the other way as he smuggled the children out of the country. Despite media reports and internal inquiries, there is no record of either officer being prosecuted. The system turned its gaze inward and said nothing.

More disturbingly, Shkelzen’s escape was not a complete surprise. Albanian prosecutors and the State Intelligence Service had reportedly been monitoring him. They knew he posed a flight risk. They had intelligence suggesting he intended to take the children to Syria. Yet no intervention came. No border alert, no custody order, no last-minute rescue at the airport.

And so, he made it.

And the questions remain: How does a state lose two children it knew were at risk? Why did no one stop them at the gate? And will justice ever catch up to those who opened the door?

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By the end of November that year, Shkelzen was dead, killed in battle fighting for ISIS. Before his death, he left one order: his children were never to be returned to Albania. And so they remained, abandoned in a collapsing empire of terror, their lives shackled to the ideology of their captors.

Years passed. The siblings found themselves in the barren chaos of Al Hol camp, a prison without walls in northeastern Syria. Officially controlled by Kurdish forces, the detention camp was under the shadowy rule of radicalized women who imposed extremist laws with iron cruelty and utilized Sharia courts to indoctrinate the women and children. Protests meant beatings, torture, or murder. Eva and Endri were not entirely alone — approximately 51 other Albanian children were also still strande d in Al Hol as of 2020. A more complete list of their names is posted on Shqiptarja.com using data Eva gathered during her time there.

“[L]istening to music, wearing colorful clothes or keeping children away from wearing the veil, intellectual training or talking to the media, violations that women are held accountable for, in which penalties amount to “flogging, killing, and burning tents.” – Witness from Al Hol (Hawar News)

Eva and Endri endured. They watched others vanish—some taken, some killed. Their grandmother, Mentje, tried to find them. She followed them into the maelstrom, traveling across borders and war zones, seeking a flicker of her stolen bloodline. She died in Al Hol in September 2020, a casualty not of bombs, but of heartbreak and deprivation.

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In the shadows of Al Hol, Eva Dumani’s voice briefly broke through the silence. In September 2020, she managed to send a message to her uncle and family in Tirana—a plea carried over uncertain channels.

She asked for prayers. For help. For rescue.

In her message, Eva spoke not only for herself, but for Endri too. She feared they were about to be moved—to somewhere worse. The Kurdish forces who managed the camp were beginning to relocate detainees, especially those whose countries had not claimed them. “Roxh,” she wrote. A name spoken like a curse. It was, she said, a place where people were “treated like animals,” denied food, clothing, dignity—where even children were stripped of basic humanity.

After that, the messages stopped. Since 2020, no confirmed contact has been made.

And still, her family waited.

“Eva and Endri are my children, Albanian children, who have their friends here, their school and their toys. They rise and fall in a place where death is closer to man than to God. Please, join me with them” – Mide Ndregjoni (Mother)

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And then came a crack in the iron wall.

On October 27, 2020, after years of failed efforts and international coordination, the Albanian government succeeded in piercing the veil that had long sealed its children in the ashes of Syria. With the aid of Lebanese intermediaries and the Syrian Red Crescent, a quiet, high-risk operation unfolded—one that brought home four children from the Al Hol camp. Among them was Endri Dumani.

He arrived alongside three others—Amar, Hatixhe, and the child known as Emel or Abdullah. They were escorted by a woman whose name, for years, had been whispered in the margins of tragedy: Floresha Rasha.

Floresha’s story was one of survival against the odds. Once married to Diamant Rasha, an Albanian jihadist who fell in battle in January 2014, she had been left alone in the chaos of Syria with her two children. Then the war took more from her. A sniper’s bullet left her permanently wounded—wheelchair-bound —and her daughter was killed in an aerial bombing.

Grief-stricken and maimed, Floresha was later forced into marriage with Lavdërim Muhaxhiri, a notorious Kosovar fighter. Her captivity deepened and freedom narrowed. She sought return before, but was denied. Fellow radicals threatened her with arrest if she ever dared to leave. For years, she and her remaining son lived under the weight of violence and silence.

Now, at last, she was coming home—alongside her son and two other children born of her forced marriage. Her body was broken; upon arrival in Albania, she would require immediate surgery. But she was alive. That, in itself, was a quiet defiance.

Prime Minister Edi Rama met the children and Floresha in Lebanon before their return, a rare personal gesture. There, seated among the scarred survivors of a war his country did not start, he bore witness to what had been lost—and what might still be saved.

Endri returned to Albania with eyes far older than his years. Since May 21, 2025, he has been receiving care—psychological support, therapy, and the protection of a government determined to mend what was broken.

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When Endri returned, alone, in October 2020, questions surfaced immediately: Where was Eva? Why wasn’t she with him? The silence around her absence was deafening. Whispers began to spread—inside Al Hol, in refugee reports, in the press and among officials. But police and family urged patience.

Some reports suggest that Eva was given the chance to leave, just like Endri, but she refused. Why, no one knows for certain. One version, told quietly by humanitarian contacts in the region, claims Eva made a conscious choice: her brother was gravely ill. He might not survive another month in the camp. So she put him on the rescue list and stayed behind—sacrificing her own freedom for his.

Others tell a darker version. That when Albanian special forces entered Al Hol searching for her, they told camp residents they were looking for an “orphan.” The word terrified Eva. In her mind, it meant she would be taken to an orphanage in Albania—not returned to her family. Alone again, this time in a foreign land, stripped of identity and blood.

Still others say she never saw the rescuers at all.

Her uncle, Xhetan Ndregjoni, believes Eva is simply frightened, manipulated, and confused—a child molded by the harsh world around her. He says she was under pressure from radicalized women in the camp, including Albanians still loyal to the jihadist cause. These women, hardened by years of war and indoctrination, enforce obedience with fear. Eva, he says, had to make an impossible choice: save herself or protect her younger brother.

He fears she is still trapped—mentally, emotionally, physically—somewhere in the grey borderlands between victim and survivor.

Other accounts muddy the waters further. According to ABC News, some girls in the camp, including Eva, were deeply mistrustful of the men who came to retrieve them. Soldiers and Albanian special forces reportedly showed photographs, even offered money—$200—for information about the whereabouts of Eva and others labeled “orphans.” Word spread quickly that women taken by the soldiers had vanished or been killed. Radicalized guards used these rumors as weapons. One woman claimed that Eva had said: “They also have a picture of my uncle, ostensibly to take us to Albania, ostensibly for me to believe…”

Was it paranoia? Indoctrination? Misinformation spread like smoke in a windless room—dense, inescapable, and toxic. Whether that woman can be believed is unclear. She is known to hold extremist beliefs, and her version of events may be more propaganda than truth.

What is certain, however, is this: no one has heard from Eva since 2020.

And now, as Albanian authorities prepare a second repatriation effort, there is renewed hope. Police have confirmed that over 40 more women and children (ABC News)—part of the estimated 52 Albanian children still stranded in Syria (WSLS)—are expected to be brought home in the next phase.

We hope and pray that one day, Eva will be among them.

Multiple Victims?: Yes

Rumored or Actual Sightings: Possibly in Idlib, Syria (unconfirmed)

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

Date the Body was Recovered: Unknown

Description: Unknown

Possible Signs Of . . . : Unknown

Time of Death: Unknown

Cause of Death: Unknown

Recovered Remains (if partial): Unknown

Suspected Homicide?: Unknown

Multiple Victims?: Unknown

DNA Tested (No Match): Unknown

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

Description: Unknown

License Plate: Unknown

Description:

Shkelzen Dumani was an Albanian man in his late 30s to early 40s, originally from Dibër and later residing in Tirana. He worked in construction and was described by his brother-in-law as “peaceful and calm.” However, between 2012 and 2014, he became radicalized. In early 2014, under false pretenses, he secretly took his two children—Eva, then 6, and Endri, 8—from Albania to Syria. Later that year, on November 5, 2014, he was killed while fighting for ISIS.

Mentije Dumani (Grandmother): Traveled to Syria to support the children, became trapped in Al‑Hol, and died in September 2020 at age 73.

Mide Dumani (Mother): Remained in Albania but was occasionally in contact with both children. Endri was returned to her but there is no sign that she has spoken with Eva in several years.