A college student at Aleppo University’s Faculty of Education, named as Muhammad Hussein al Dghaim, from Jarjanaz town in the eastern suburbs of Idlib governorate, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on November 29, 2011, from his accommodation in the university’s student halls of residence. 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 December 29, 2021, his family was notified of his death on December 9, 2014. SNHR’s 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 in one of the regime’s detention centers in Damascus governorate.
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 returned to their families, these detainees continue to be classified as being among the forcibly disappeared.
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.
SNHR notes that at least 14,360 Syrian citizens have died due to torture in Syrian regime forces’ detention center.
