A man from al Hrak city in the eastern suburbs of Daraa governorate, named as Qasem al Kasaberah, was arrested by Syrian regime forces while he was passing through a checkpoint at the southern suburbs of Damascus city on October 26, 2020, and taken to an undisclosed location.
The arrest was conducted without any legal arrest warrant being issued by a court, with no members of the Qasem’s family being informed of his arrest or whereabouts, and with his phones 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.
