Two men from al Sanamayn city in the northern suburbs of Daraa governorate, named as Fouad Ahmad al Kharouf and Ismail al Shattar, were arrested on December 19, by Syrian regime Military Security personnel as they were passing through a checkpoint in Jdayya village in the northern suburbs of the governorate, and taken to an undisclosed location. SNHR notes that the detainees are amongst those who had agreed on a settlement previously.
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 the 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.
