A man from Kanaker village in the southwest of Damascus suburbs governorate, named as Qasem Muhammad al Masri, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on February 23, 2021, when he was passing through a checkpoint in Damascus city and taken to an undisclosed location.
The arrest was conducted without any legal arrest warrant being issued by a court, with no member of Qasem’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.
