Ali Yousef al-Mbasbas from Tafas city in western rural Daraa governorate, a former serviceman who defected from Syrian regime forces, was arrested by Syrian regime forces in 2018 after surrendering himself following the issuance of Amnesty Decree No. 18 of 2018, granting amnesty for military crimes, on October 9, 2018. He has been classified as forcibly disappeared ever since with the Syrian regime denying any knowledge of his whereabouts and refusing to allow anyone, even a lawyer, to visit him. On August 9, 2023, his family learned he had been listed as dead in the civil registry’s records. We can confirm he was in good health at the time of his arrest, indicating a strong possibility that he died due to torture in a regime detention center.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) can also confirm that Syrian regime authorities have not returned Ali’s body to his family; this is standard 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 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.
