Faraj Foad al-Jamous, a 38-year-old man from Dael city in rural Daraa governorate, was arrested by Syrian regime forces in 2018 at a checkpoint while traveling from Dael city to Damascus city. His family was last able to visit him in 2022 at Sednaya Military Prison in Rural Damascus (Rif Dimshaq). 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 7, 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 and medical negligence in a regime detention center.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) can also confirm that Syrian regime authorities have not returned Faraj’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 also 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.
