A woman from Mu’adamiyet al Sham city in the west of Damascus suburbs governorate, named as Afaf Ibrahim al Sheikh, was arrested by personnel from the Syrian regime’s Military Security Branch when she was passing through a checkpoint near al Soumariya bus station in Damascus city on August 29, 2020. Afaf, who was born in 1981, was one of the people who agreed on the settlement of their status. Then, she was taken to Adra Central Prison in Damascus suburbs governorate.
The arrest was conducted without legal arrest warrants being issued by a court, with no member of the Afaf’s family being informed of her arrest, and with the phone being confiscated, preventing her from contacting her family or a lawyer. SNHR fears that she will be subjected to torture and ultimately classified as forcibly ‘disappeared’, like approximately 85 percent of all detained persons.
SNHR can confirm that at least 130,689 Syrian citizens are still detained or forcibly disappeared in the regime’s detention centers, constituting a grave threat to the detainees’ wellbeing given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
