Syrian regime forces arrested three civilians, from Daraa city, including a non-commissioned officer who defected from the regime forces, when they were passing through a checkpoint near Menkat al Hatab village in the northern suburbs of Daraa governorate and taken to an undisclosed location on October 3, 2020.
The arrests were conducted without any legal arrest warrants being issued by a court, with no members of the detainees’ families being informed of their arrests or whereabouts, and with the phones of those detained civilians being confiscated, preventing them from contacting their families or lawyers. SNHR fears that they 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.
