A lawyer from Hama city, named as Abdul Rahim al Samman, was arrested by Syrian regime forces in the city on September 19, 2020, after he criticized poor living conditions in the city on his personal ‘Facebook’ account’, and taken to the Criminal Security Branch in the city.
The arrest was conducted without any legal arrest warrants being issued by a court, with no member of Abdul Rahim’s family being informed of his arrest, and with his phone being confiscated, preventing him from contacting his family or a lawyer. SNHR fears that he 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.
