Hussein Abdul Hamid Hafserjawi from Idlib city, born in 1989, was a student at the Faculty of Archeology at Aleppo University (Idlib branch) at the time of his arrest. He was arrested by Syrian regime forces on July 20, 2012, after being wounded by a gunshot fired by regime forces at protestors in front of the Saed bin Abi Waqqas Mosque in Idlib city, while he was participating in a peaceful anti-regime demonstration there. Since that time, he has been classified as forcibly disappeared, as the Syrian regime denied detaining him and forbade any contact with him, even by a lawyer. On August 28, 2022, his family learned that he had died in one of the regime’s detention centers on November 11, 2014. We have information confirming he was in a bad health condition due to his wounds at the time of his arrest, which makes it highly likely that he died due to torture and lack of medical care.
SNHR can confirm that the Syrian regime failed to hand Hussein’s body over 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, these detainees continue to be classified as being among the forcibly disappeared.
We can confirm that 135,253 Syrian citizens are still detained or forcibly disappeared in Syrian regime forces detention centers. We fear for their fate in light of the spread of COVID-19.
SNHR notes that 14,464 Syrian citizens are documented as having died due to torture inside the Syrian regime’s detention centers.
