Muhsen Jamil Hezam is a member of the political office of the opposition Democratic Arab Socialist Union party and of the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR) in Syria. Muhsen who was born in 1948 is from Aleppo city. He was arrested by Syrian regime forces on June 15, 2020, during a raid on his home in Aleppo city and taken to an undisclosed location.
We note that the arrest was conducted without any legal arrest warrant being issued by a court, with no member of his family being informed of his arrest or whereabouts, and while his phone was confiscated, preventing him from contacting any family member or a lawyer. SNHR fears that he will be subjected to torture and ultimately classified as forcibly ‘disappeared’, like approximately 85 percent of the detained persons.
SNHR can confirm that at least 130,000 Syrian citizens are still detained or forcibly disappeared in the regime’s detention centers, constituting a grave threat to the detainees’ wellbeing given the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
