A man from Busra al Sham city in Daraa governorate, named as Manaf Abdul Karim al Salakhdeh, was arrested by Syrian regime forces in 2012 as he was passing through a checkpoint in Damascus suburbs. Since then, he has been classified as forcibly disappeared, with the Syrian regime denying his arrest and preventing anyone, even a lawyer, from visiting him. On March 1, 2021, his family was informed by a released detainee that Manaf had died due to torture in March 2014 in Seydnaya Military Prison.
SNHR has received confirmation that Syrian regime forces failed to hand over Manaf’s body to his family; this is standard practice for the regime, with the bodies of the majority of detainees who die in its detention centers being disposed of through mass cremations. Since the whereabouts of these prisoners’ remains is unknown and they are not handed over to their relatives, they continue to be classified as being among the forcibly disappeared.
SNHR can confirm that at least 130,758 Syrian citizens are still detained or forcibly disappeared in regime detention centers, constituting a grave threat to the detainees’ wellbeing, given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
SNHR notes that at least 14,269 Syrian citizens have died due to torture in Syrian regime forces’ detention center.
