A man, born in 1987, identified as Bashar Mustafa Zarrou from Andan city in the northern suburbs of Aleppo governorate, was arrested on July 19, 2012, at a checkpoint in the Jam’iyet al-Zahra neighborhood in Aleppo city. Bashar has been forcibly disappeared ever since, with the Syrian regime denying detaining him and forbidding anyone, even a lawyer, from visiting him. On July 17, 2023, his family learned that had died inside a regime detention center. We can confirm that he was in good health at the time of his arrest, indicating a strong probability that he died due to torture and medical negligence.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) can also confirm that Syrian regime forces have not returned Rami’s dead body to his family; this is a common practice for the regime, which fails to return the bodies of the overwhelming majority of those who die in its detention centers to their families. Instead, the Syrian regime disposes of these bodies in mass cremations. 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 135,481 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 15,039 Syrian citizens due to torture in regime detention centers since March 2011.
