Wesam Fawwaz Mer’i al Haj Ali was a college student at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in al Ba’ath University in Homs city, from Kherbet Ghazala town in the eastern suburbs of Daraa governorate. Wesam, who was born in 1994, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on January 21, 2013, at the university. Since then, he has been classified as forcibly disappeared, with the Syrian regime denying his arrest and preventing anyone, even a lawyer, from visiting him. On June 29, 2020, SNHR received information confirming that he had died in regime custody. Our data from numerous sources confirms that he was in good health at the time of his arrest, indicating that he probably died due to torture. SNHR has received confirmation that Syrian regime forces failed to hand over his body to his family; this is standard practice for the regime regarding the majority of detainees who die in its detention centers, whose bodies are disposed of through mass cremations. Since the whereabouts of these prisoners’ remains is unknown and they are not handed over to their relatives, they continue to be classified among the forcibly disappeared persons.
