Abdullah Mohammad al-Rzouqi, from Mahkan town in eastern Deir Ez-Zour governorate, was arrested in 2018 by Syrian regime forces. He has been forcibly disappeared ever since with the Syrian regime denying having him or allowing anyone to visit him even lawyers. On February 28, 2023, his family learned he died inside Sednaya Military Prison in Damascus suburbs governorate. We can confirm that he was in good health when he was arrested, which makes it highly likely that he had died due to torture and medical negligence.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) can also confirm that the Syrian regime has not returned Abdullah’s 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 in its detention centers to their families. Instead, the Syrian regime dispose of these dead bodies in deliberate mass incinerations. It should be noted that, as long as the victim’s body is not returned to his or her family, the individual in question is still classified as a forcibly disappeared person.
It is noteworthy that approximately 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.
