On October 17, 2021, Syrian regime forces arrested four civilians from Raqqa city, as they were passing through a checkpoint in al Shnan village which is administratively a part of al Sabkha town in the eastern suburbs of Raqqa governorate and taken to an undisclosed location.
The arrests were conducted without any legal arrest warrants being issued by a court, with no members of the detainees’ families being informed of their arrests or whereabouts, and with their phones being confiscated, preventing them from contacting their families or lawyers. SNHR fears that they will be subjected to torture and ultimately classified as forcibly ‘disappeared’, like approximately 85 percent of all detained persons in Syria.
SNHR demands that financial and therapeutic compensation be provided to the victims and their families, as well as insisting on an end to all arbitrary arrests which aim to spread terror among Syrians and to the blackmail of families, and we further demand that the fates of thousands of people disappeared by the regime be revealed as we have serious concern for the detainees’ wellbeing, given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
