On September 20, 2021, Syrian regime forces personnel arrested five civilians, including a child, as they were passing through a checkpoint at the southern entrance of Deir Ez-Zour city while they were heading from Deir Ez-Zour city to Damascus city, taking them to an undisclosed location.
The arrests were conducted without any legal arrest warrants being issued by a court, with no members of the detainees’ families being informed of their arrests or whereabouts, and with their phones being confiscated, preventing them from contacting their families or lawyers. SNHR fears that they will be subjected to torture and ultimately classified as forcibly ‘disappeared’, like approximately 85 percent of all detained persons in Syria.
SNHR can confirm that at least 131,469 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.
