Ali Walid al-Masri, aged 23, from al-Mzayreeb town in the western suburbs of Daraa governorate, was arrested in September 2020 by Syrian regime forces on the road connecting Daraa city and al-Mzayreeb town. He has been forcibly disappeared ever since, as the Syrian regime denied having him, and refused to let anyone visit him, even lawyers.
On November 29, 2022, his family learnt that Ali had died in Seydnaya Military Prison in Damascus suburbs governorate. We can confirm that he was in good health at the time of his arrest, which makes it highly likely that he died due to torture and medical negligence.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights can also confirm that the Syrian regime has not returned his dead body to his family; this is a common practice for the regime, which fails to return the overwhelming majority of the bodies of those who die inside its detention centers to their families. Instead, the Syrian regime dispose of these dead bodies in deliberate mass incinerations. It should be noted as long as the victim’s body is not returned to their family, the individual in question is still classified as a forcibly disappeared person.
It is worth noting that roughly 135,253 Syrian citizens are still detained or forcibly disappeared in Syrian regime detention centers. We have serious concerns about their fate. We have documented the deaths of at least 14,475 Syrian citizens due to torture in regime detention centers since March 2011.
