A 17-year-old girl, identified as Nagham Abdullah Othman from al-Ghariya al-Gharbiya town in eastern rural Daraa governorate, was arrested on July 25, 2023, by Syrian regime forces at a checkpoint while she was traveling from her home town to Jordan via the Nasib Border Crossing in southern Daraa governorate. She was taken to the Syrian regime’s Military Security Intelligence branch in Daraa city. On July 28, 2023, she was transferred to a regime detention center in Damascus city.
The arrest was carried out without any court-issued legal warrant being presented. Nagham’s family was not informed of her arrest, while her phone was seized, and she has not been allowed to contact her family or a lawyer.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) is concerned that she 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 Nagham 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.
