Ismail Ahmad al-Yassin, from al-Hraki town, eastern suburbs of Idlib governorate, he was 54-year-old when he was arrested by Syrian regime forces along with his son Mahmoud, 21-year-old at the time of his arrest. The two were arrested on November 7, 2015, after getting lost in Sahl al-Ghab areas, which are under the control of Syrian regime forces, in the western suburbs of Hama governorate. They have been forcibly disappeared ever since, as the Syrian regime denied having them, and refused to let anyone visit them, even lawyers.
On November 3, 2022, their family learnt that Ismail died in 2016 in a Syrian regime detention center. The Syrian Network for Human Rights can confirm that he was in good health at the time of his arrest, which makes it highly likely that he died due to torture and medical negligence. Mahmoud’s fate remains unknown.
We can also confirm that the Syrian regime has not returned his dead body to his family; this is a common practice for the regime, which fails to return the overwhelming majority of the bodies of those who die inside its detention centers to their families. Instead, the Syrian regime dispose of these dead bodies in deliberate mass incinerations. It should be noted 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 worth noting that roughly 135,253 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 at least 14,475 Syrian citizens due to torture in regime detention centers since March 2011.
