Mahmoud Bkheitan Hamamdeh from Jilleen village in the western suburbs of Daraa governorate was arrested by Syrian regime forces on June 16, 2020, as he was passing through a checkpoint in Damascus city and taken to an undisclosed location.
We note that the arrest was conducted without any legal arrest warrant being issued by a court, with no member of his family being informed of his arrest or whereabouts, while his phone was confiscated, preventing him from contacting any family member or a lawyer. SNHR fears that he will be subjected to torture and ultimately classified as forcibly ‘disappeared’, like approximately 85 percent of the detained persons.
SNHR can confirm that at least 130,000 Syrian citizens are still detained in the regime’s detention centers, constituting a grave threat to the detainees’ wellbeing given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
