A man from Kafr Takhareem town in the western suburbs of Idlib governorate, named as Muhammad al Aqel, who works for the Syria Immunization Group, was arrested by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham when he was conducting a training session for the group in Armanaz town in the western suburbs of the governorate on March 22, 2021, and taken to an undisclosed location.
SNHR notes that no member of Muhammad’s family was informed of his arrest or whereabouts, with his phone being confiscated, preventing him from contacting his family. 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 2,246 Syrian citizens are still detained or forcibly disappeared in HTS’s detention centers, constituting a grave threat to the detainees’ wellbeing, given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
