Muhammad Salim Zarzouri, born in 1989, from al Najiya village in Idlib governorate’s western suburbs, was arrested in the village by Syrian regime forces in October 2011, and has been classified as forcibly disappeared ever since. Thereafter, the regime consistently denied detaining him and refused to allow anyone, even a lawyer, to visit him. On May 8, 2022, his family learned that he had been registered as dead in the civil registry, which gives the date of his death as October 15, 2012. SNHR believes it’s highly probable that Muhammad died due to torture inside one of the Syrian regime detention centers.
SNHR can confirm that the Syrian regime failed to hand Muhammad’s body over to his family; this is standard practice for the regime, with the bodies of the majority of detainees who die in its detention centers being disposed of through mass cremations. Since the whereabouts of these prisoners’ remains is unknown and they are not handed over to their relatives, these detainees continue to be classified as being among the forcibly disappeared.
SNHR can confirm that at least 132,667 Syrian citizens are currently still detained or forcibly disappeared in the regime’s detention centers, constituting a grave threat to the detainees’ wellbeing, particularly given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
SNHR notes that at least 14,449 Syrian citizens have died due to torture in Syrian regime detention centers.
