Houkar Mohammad Ali Habash, a pharmacist from al-Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo city, was arrested on July 11, 2023, by Syrian regime forces personnel at a checkpoint set up at the entrance to the neighborhood over purchasing medications from regime-held areas and trying to transport them to his workplace in an area under the control of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). He was taken to a regime detention center in Damascus city. The arrest also involved seizing his car and the medications that he was trying to transport.
The arrest was carried out without any court-issued legal warrant being presented. Farouq’s family was not informed of his arrest, while his phone was seized, and he has not been allowed to contact his family or a lawyer.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) is concerned that he may be subjected to torture in detention and may go on to become yet another case of enforced disappearance, with 85 percent of all those detained falling into this category.
We call for the provision of both material and moral reparations for Farouq and all other victims of such detentions and for their families, and call on all parties to put an end to all arbitrary detentions whose only purpose is to spread mass fear and extort people.
We also call on the regime to reveal the fate of thousands of people forcibly disappeared in its detention centers. We are seriously concerned about their fates.
