Khalaf Ahmidi al Dghaim, born in 1983, a volunteer policeman in the investigation section of Syrian regime forces, from al Zer village in the eastern suburbs of Deir Ez-Zour suburbs, was arrested by regime forces in 2013 during a raid on his workplace in al Yarmouk Police Station in Damascus city. 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 25, 2021, his family was informed that he had died in 2017. SNHR 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 and lack of medical care in one of the regime’s detention centers.
SNHR has received confirmation that Syrian regime forces failed to hand over his body 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 families, they continue to be classified as being among the forcibly disappeared.
SNHR can confirm that at least 131,178 Syrian citizens are 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 14,338 Syrian citizens have died due to torture in Syrian regime forces’ detention center.
