A man, identified as 20-year-old Abbas Mahmoud Hamada from Bashmra village, administratively a part of Afrin city in northern rural Aleppo governorate, was arrested on August 2, 2024, by personnel from the Syrian regime’s Fourth Division at a checkpoint, known as al-Awared Checkpoint, on the outskirts of al-Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo city. He was then taken to the General Intelligence Directorate’s branch in Aleppo city.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) notes that the arrest was carried out without any court-issued legal warrant being presented. Abbas’s family was not informed of his arrest, while his phone was seized, and he has not been allowed to contact his family or a lawyer since then.
SNHR is concerned that he may be subjected to torture in detention and may go on to become yet another forcibly disappeared person, with 85 percent of all those detained falling into this category.
We call for the provision of both material and moral reparations for Abbas and all other victims of such detentions and for their families, and call on all parties to put an end to all arbitrary detentions whose only purpose is to spread mass fear and extort people.
We also call on the regime to reveal the fate of thousands of people forcibly disappeared in its detention centers. We are seriously concerned about their fates.
