Mohammad Dandash, born in 1994, worked as a car mechanic in the al-Sena’iya area ‘industrial zone’ in his home city of Jisr al-Shoghour city in western rural Idlib governorate, was arrested on May 11, 2012, by Syrian regime forces following a bombing in the industrial zone. His family was able to last visit him in 2014 at Sednaya Military Prison in Rural Damascus ‘Rif Dimshaq’ governorate. 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 April 25, 2024, his family learned that he died in Sednaya Military Prison in 2017. 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 Sednaya Military Prison.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) can also confirm that Syrian regime authorities have not returned Mohammad’s body to his family; this is standard practice for the regime, which has failed 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 or mass burials. 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 136,192 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 approximately 15,076 Syrian citizens due to torture in regime detention centers since March 2011.
