A student at Damascus University’s Petroleum Engineering faculty, named as Wael Hamshou, born in 1999, from Lahtha village in north Suwayda governorate, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on October 27, 2021, while he was passing through a checkpoint near Hasyaa town in the southern suburbs of Homs governorate, in connection with his participation in a protest criticizing the poor living conditions in the city in 2020 and taken to an undisclosed location.
The arrest was conducted without any legal arrest warrant being issued by a court, with no member of Wael’s family being informed of his arrests or whereabouts, and with his phones 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 demands that financial and psychological compensation be provided to victims and their families, that there be an end to all arbitrary arrests which aim to spread terror among Syrians and blackmail detainees’ families, and that the fates of thousands of disappeared people be revealed as we have serious concerns for detainees’ wellbeing, particularly given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
