Mohammad Abdul Qader al-Sheikh, a man born in 1977 from Aqrabat town in northern rural Idlib governorate, was arrested in 2012 by Syrian regime forces in Aleppo city. He was then taken to Aleppo Central Prison 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 September 4, 2024, his family learned that he had died in a regime detention center. 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 regime detention centers.
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 136,614 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 15,102 Syrian citizens due to torture in regime detention centers since March 2011.
