Badea Arafat, a man born in 1962 from Ma’aret al-Nu’man city in southern rural Idlib governorate, worked in construction. He was arrested on August 30, 2013, by Syrian regime forces in Latakia 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 29, 2024, his family learned that he had been registered as dead in the civil registry office in Hama city. 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 regime detention centers.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) can also confirm that Syrian regime authorities have not returned Badea’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.
