A man from Jisr al Shoghour city in the western suburbs of Idlib governorate, named as Hasan Ahmad Ghazal, was arrested in the city by Syrian regime forces in 2011. Since then, he has been classified as forcibly disappeared, with the Syrian regime denying his arrest and preventing anyone, even a lawyer, from visiting him. On November 1, 2021, his family was informed that he was registered as dead in the Civil Registry on June 23, 2021. SNHR notes that he probably died due to torture in one of the regime’s detention’s centers.
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, these detainees continue to be classified as being among the forcibly disappeared.
SNHR can confirm that at least 131,469 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.
SNHR notes that at least 14,360 Syrian citizens have died due to torture in Syrian regime forces’ detention center.
