Abdul Rahman al-Hanini, a university student from Kafranbel city in southern rural Idlib who was studying information engineering in Aleppo University, was arrested on January 26, 2014, by Syrian regime forces in raid on his place of residence near the university in Aleppo city. 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 30, 2023, his family learned he died in a regime detention center in 2015. We can confirm he was in good health at the time of his arrest, indicating a strong probability 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 Abdul Rahman’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 at least 135,638 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.
