Anas Khaled Sha’bani, born in 1983, from Sindiyana village in the suburbs of Quneitra governorate, was living in Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs city at the time of his arrest by Syrian regime forces on October 13, 2013, when he was detained while passing through a checkpoint in the Baba Amr neighborhood. He has been forcibly disappeared almost ever since, with Syrian regime forces denying having detained him and allowing nobody, even a lawyer, to visit him. On January 31, 2022, his family learned that the civil registry records show he died on May 11, 2014. SNHR believe it is probable that he died due to torture inside Saydnaya Military Prison in Damascus suburbs governorate.
SNHR notes 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 relatives, they 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, particularly 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.
