The imam of a mosque in al Baghouz town in the eastern suburbs of Deir Ez-Zour governorate, named as Hashem Suleiman al Sayyed, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on July 8, 2021, as he was passing through a checkpoint at the southern entrance of Deir Ez-Zour 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 Hashem’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 131,178 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.
