A 22-year-old man, Walid Khaled al Khallaj, from Kanaker village in the southwestern of Damascus suburbs governorate, was arrested by Syrian regime Security Political forces personnel on February 16, 2021, while he was passing through a checkpoint in Sahnaya town in west of Damascus suburbs governorate and taken to an undisclosed location.
The arrest was conducted without any legal arrest warrant being issued by a court, with no member of Walid’s family being informed of his arrest or whereabouts, 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 in Syria.
SNHR can confirm that at least 130,758 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.
