A man from al Zalaqiyat village in the northern suburbs of Hama governorate, named as Emad al Haj Rahmoun, was arrested in 2019 by Syrian regime military security personnel as he was passing through a checkpoint in his way back from Jordan to Hama city and taken to the Palestine Branch in Damascus city. Since then, Emad, who was 55 at the time of his arrest, has been classified as forcibly disappeared, with the Syrian regime denying his arrest and preventing anyone, even a lawyer, from visiting him. On August 30, 2021, his family was informed of his death on August 8, 2021. SNHR data from numerous sources confirms that he was in good health at the time of his arrest, indicating that he probably died due to torture in the regime detention center.
SNHR has received confirmation that Syrian regime forces failed to hand over his 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 families, they continue to be classified as being among the forcibly disappeared.
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, particularly given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
