The Hague – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR)

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) today released its 13th annual report on enforced disappearance in Syria, to mark the International Day of the Disappeared, which is observed annually on August 30. In the report, the group notes that at least 113,218 of the people arrested by the parties to the conflict in Syria since March 2011, including 3,129 children and 6,71 women, are still forcibly disappeared. SNHR also stressed that there is no end in sight for the crime of enforced disappearance in Syria.

The 22-page report notes that, in Syria’s case, enforced disappearance has become an exceptionally pressing and critical issue, so much so that it can be called a phenomenon, given the breadth of its scope and the way in which it’s proliferated since the start of the popular uprising for democracy in Syria in March 2011. In the years since then, rates of enforced disappearances have only increased, in what is one of the most overwhelming human tragedies that continues to haunt and devastate the lives and hearts of the Syrian people, as it’s done for over 13 years to date, with numerous lives, including those of both the forcibly disappeared persons and their loved ones, being shattered and destroyed as a result of this horrendous crime. The Syrian regime, the report adds, has used enforced disappearance as a strategic instrument to consolidate control and crush its opponents. To achieve this objective, the regime has utilized this strategy in a deliberate and direct manner against all those who became activists or participated in the popular uprising for democracy, particularly in its early years that saw the highest rates of enforced disappearances, in order to crush and undermine the anti-regime protests. Subsequently, these practices grew in scale and targeted specific populations based on their regional or sectarian identity, as the protests spread across the country. Similarly, these ‘disappearances’ have also been among the regime strategies to terrorize and collectively punish society. By no means are these barbaric practices isolated or random occurrences. Rather, they’re part of a systematic strategy used by the regime security establishment, which carries out enforced disappearances in an organized and calculated manner involving the highest echelons of power in the state and the security apparatus, meaning that all the various levels of the military and security establishment are implicated in these crimes, along with the judiciary that has failed to uphold its role in protecting the rights of forcibly disappeared persons. Indeed, the judiciary itself has served as another instrument used by the regime to facilitate and cover up enforced disappearance crimes.

As the report explains, SNHR has been engaged in investigating and documenting enforced disappearance cases since March 2011, building a central database for this purpose that contains information and items of evidence regarding the victims of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance in Syria. The report reveals that SNHR has been able to collect tens of thousands of items of data and documents that support the processes of investigation and analysis of enforced disappearance carried out by SNHR itself, and by the UN and various respected international bodies, or as part of the litigation processes taking place under universal jurisdiction. In all of this, SNHR’s objective has been to realize a comprehensive and thorough path to ensuring that the perpetrators are held to account and that victims and that victims and their families receive full reparation. The constantly increasing number of enforced disappearance cases in Syria since 2011 is, after all, a direct result of the impunity that has shielded the main perpetrators for too long, which, shamefully, continues to do so.

As SNHR’s database attests, at least 157,634 of the people arrested by the parties to the conflict and controlling forces in Syria since March 2011 up until August 2024, including 5,274 children and 10,221 women (adult female), are still under arrest and/or forcibly disappeared. Syrian regime forces are responsible for the vast majority of arrests and enforced disappearances, detaining 86.7 percent of all such victims. Meanwhile, at least 113,218 of the aforementioned people arrested by the parties to the conflict and controlling forces in Syria since March 2011 up until August 2024, including 3,129 children and 6,712 women (adult female), are still forcibly disappeared. Of the 113,218 enforced disappearance cases, Syrian regime forces are responsible for at least 96,321 cases, including of 2,329 children and 5,742 women (adult female), while ISIS has been responsible for 8,684, including of 319 children and 255 women (adult female). Moreover, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has been responsible for 2,246 enforced disappearances, including of 17 children and 32 women (adult female), while all armed opposition factions/Syrian National Army (SNA) have been responsible for 2,986, including of 261 children and 574 women (adult female). Lastly, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been responsible for 2,981 enforced disappearances, including of 203 children and 109 women (adult female).

These figures, which draw upon SNHR’s data, show that the Syrian regime has arrested and ‘disappeared’ by far the largest proportion of Syrian citizens in these categories. A detainee usually becomes a forcibly disappeared person immediately after or a few days after their arrest, which is reflected in the massive number of forcibly disappeared persons, the largest proportion of whom – approximately 85 percent – have been forcibly disappeared by Syrian regime forces. The enormous number of enforced disappearance victims confirms that this is a systematic, routine practice carried out in a widespread manner against tens of thousands of detainees. As such, it constitutes a crime against humanity.

The report also documents that Syrian regime forces registered at least 1,634 forcibly disappeared persons, including 24 children and 21 women, as well as 16 medical personnel, as dead in the civil registry records since the start of 2018 up until August 2024. In all these 1,634 cases, the cause of death was not revealed, and the regime failed to return the victims’ bodies to their families or even to notify the families of their loved ones’ demise at the time of death. Among these 1,634 cases were also four people who have been identified from the photos of torture victims leaked from regime military hospitals, known as the ‘Caesar photos’. According to the death certificates issued by the Syrian regime’s civil registry offices, the largest proportion of these 1,634 victims died in 2014, followed by 2013 and then 2015.

In 2024, the report adds, the parties to the conflict in Syria have continued to use enforced disappearance as an instrument of oppression to consolidate control, as well as to blackmail victims and their families. As SNHR has documented, all parties to the conflict, including Syrian regime forces, the SDF, HTS, and all armed opposition factions/SNA, have been responsible for the enforced disappearance of civilians. The report stresses that the majority of enforced disappearances carried out by regime forces since the beginning of this year targeted refugees who were forcibly deported from Lebanon, as well as refugees returning from Jordan via the Nasib Crossing in southern Daraa governorate, and refugees returning via Damascus International Airport in Damascus city. These detainees are usually taken to regime security and military detention centers in Homs and Damascus governorates. Since the start of 2024, SNHR has documented the Syrian regime’s arrest of 156 of the refugees forcibly deported from Lebanon, including four children and three women.

Meanwhile, in 2024, the SDF has also continued to use enforced disappearance as an instrument to crush any form of political or social dissent, and as a means of tightening its security grip in areas under its control. To achieve these ends, the group established secret detention centers, where detainees are forbidden any contact with the outside world. Our data suggests that the SDF routinely use unproven allegations, such as “affiliation with ISIS”, “security threats”, and “terrorism”, as pretexts to justify the detentions they carry out in a widespread manner. US-led International Coalition forces have even been involved in some of these operations which targeted individuals including children, women, and persons with special needs under the pretext of “failing to inform the authorities”, although the actual goal of these practices is to consolidate control and spread fear in the areas under the SDF’s control. Those detained over these accusations have been forced during interrogation to confess to acts they never committed under the coercion of torture and various threats. They were also denied any opportunity to contact their lawyers either during interrogation or when they were referred to court.

Additionally, the report records that at least 92 individuals were kept under arrest/detained in HTS detention centers between January 2024 and June 2024 over their participation in anti-HTS protests. Meanwhile, armed opposition factions/SNA have also carried out arbitrary arrests/detentions, including of women. Most of these detentions were conducted on a mass scale, targeting individuals coming from areas controlled by the Syrian regime or the SDF. In addition, we documented detentions that exhibited an ethnic character, with these incidents concentrated in areas under the control of the armed opposition factions/SNA in Aleppo governorate. Most of these arrests occurred without judicial authorization and without the participation of the police force, which is the sole legitimate administrative authority responsible for arrests and detentions through the judiciary, as well as being carried out without any clear charges being presented against those being detained. Furthermore, we documented raids and arrests by SNA personnel targeting civilians who were accused of working with the SDF, with these arrests being concentrated in some of the villages which are administratively part of Afrin city in Aleppo governorate.

The report concludes that, based on our database on cases of arbitrary arrest, torture, and enforced disappearance at the hands of regime forces, there is no indication at all of any willingness on the regime’s part to cease torture, or even to introduce the most minimal and basic of measures mentioned above in response to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling. Furthermore, at least 136,614 people are still arbitrarily detained and/or forcibly disappeared by the regime, and enduring torture in regime detention centers. Despite being responsible for such unimaginably horrific suffering, the Syrian regime has not launched even one investigation into the disappearance or torture of any detainees by its personnel. On the contrary, the regime has enacted ‘laws’ shielding them from accountability.

The report calls on the UN Security Council and the UN to protect tens of thousands of detainees and persons forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime from the severe risk of dying due to torture, and save those who are still alive. Also, the report calls on the ICJ to take more decisive provisional measures against the Syrian regime in light of the abundance of evidence showing the regime’s lack of commitment to the previous provisional measures, especially considering that the case brought against the Syrian regime before the ICJ is a genuine test of the ICJ’s credibility and power. As such, the report states, the ICJ must take immediate and effective measures to address those violations and ensure the realization of justice and accountability. All possible measure must be taken against the Syrian regime, the report adds, including the UN Security Council issuing a binding resolution calling for ending systematic torture, which constitutes crimes against humanity, and unequivocally condemning the Syrian regime’s breach of the ICJ Order, with the report also making a number of other recommendations.

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Press release: (Download the full report below)

The Hague – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) today release a report entitled, ‘Amnesty Decree No. 36 of 2023 Excludes Political Prisoners’, in which the group stressed that the Syrian regime has failed to release at least 3,696 children and 144 detainees aged 70 or older, despite their inclusion in many previous amnesty decrees.

The 16-page report notes that the Syrian regime promulgated a total of 23 amnesty decrees between March 2011 and November 20, 2023. While this figure might seem relatively high, all these amnesty decrees have failed to secure the release of more than a miniscule proportion of the detainees and forcibly disappeared persons imprisoned in the regime’s detention centers. To put this into perspective, the report adds that amnesty decrees have led to the release of only 7,351 arbitrarily arrested detainees, with the regime still holding approximately 135,253 detainees/forcibly disappeared persons. That is to say, all of these amnesty decrees have secured the release of less than five percent of all those detained and forcibly disappeared by the regime since 2011, while the regime’s machinery of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance has never ceased its operations.

The report notes that, on November 16, 2023, the Syrian regime promulgated Legislative Decree No. 36 of 2023, providing a general amnesty for all crimes committed before the date of the decree. This decree was preceded by three other amnesty decrees in 2022. The report notes that, by issuing these amnesty decrees over this short period of time, the regime is trying to promote a distorted image to influence public opinion and mislead the international community by claiming that it is indeed releasing detainees. Simultaneously, the regime is also trying to accomplish domestic goals related to the deteriorating state of its overcrowded prisons. That is to say that the regime is releasing more actual criminals and contravening its punitive laws just to relieve the pressure on its prisons, to such a degree that in many Syrian areas today, criminals have no hesitation in committing crimes knowing that they will be included in any upcoming amnesty decree. The high frequency of the regime’s issuance of these amnesty decrees has popularized and perpetuated this mindset among criminals, especially since these decrees primarily favor them.

The report presents an analysis of the text of Legislative Decree No. 36 of 2023 resting on seven main points, divided into two sections; the first of these focuses on full and partial pardons, while the second focuses on exceptions to the amnesty, namely detainees and persons forcibly disappeared by the regime, which the report believes to be one of the reasons why the regime issued this decree in this way and form. As the report reveals, no fewer than 86 detainees and forcibly disappeared persons who were aged 70 at the time of their arrest are incarcerated in regime prisons, with at least 58 of these individuals having passed the age of 70 since their arrest in recent years. None of these prisoners have been released by the Syrian regime despite the fact that this article has been included in many amnesty decrees, including Article 4 of Legislative Decree No. 13 of 2021, and Article 3 of Legislative Decree No. 6 of 2022.

The report adds that, despite the fact that Legislative Decree No. 36 provides a full pardon for all corrective measures for juvenile offenders, and a partial pardon for one-third of offenses committed by the juveniles, this article excludes no fewer than 3,696 children who were arrested between March 2011 and November 20, 2023, and are still detained and/or forcibly disappeared in regime detention centers. This means that the regime has once again violated all domestic legislative standards put in place for trying juveniles. For one, according to Law No. 18 of 1974, amended by Legislative Decree No. 52 of 2003, a juvenile can only be tried by a juvenile court. Juvenile law prohibits any other court from trying children, whether they were prosecuted for criminal or political cases, even if the court’s mandate includes trying such cases, such as exceptional courts. Despite this, the Syrian regime has referred children to exceptional courts such as the now-disbanded Military Field Court and the Counterterrorism Court without assigning any special juvenile judge, as required, except in a handful of cases. Many of these children have received exceptionally harsh sentences, including both long prison sentences and even death sentences.

Furthermore, Legislative Decree No. 36 grants full pardon for the crimes named in Articles 285 and 286 of the Syrian Penal Code established in Legislative Decree No. 148 of 1494 and its subsequent amendments, provided that they were committed by Syrian nationals. These offenses, which are commonly included in amnesty decrees, are usually introduced alongside others not included in the amnesty decrees to help provide grounds to charge detainees. Therefore, they have no effect on detainees and persons forcibly disappeared in regime detention centers, which was the case in previous amnesty decrees, as they were included but never led to the release of any of those detained for the reason mentioned above.

Additionally, the report notes that Legislative Decree No. 36 excludes all offenses used as grounds to charge detainees and forcibly disappeared persons, whether these were used in a widespread or limited manner. In either case, this was part of the aims of the decree, to cater to offenders who committed criminal misdemeanors and felonies, but to exclude political prisoners. To that end, the report concludes that it is clear that this decree does not deviate from the regime’s conventional policy in its previous decrees. In other words, those decrees give no hope to the detainees and their families, but are riddled with loopholes, exceptions, and requirements that render them effectively ineffectual, save for posing a serious threat to anyone who delusionally surrenders themselves within the period specified in the hopes of being included in the amnesty, as well as dragging more young Syrians into the military by conscription and involving them in the conflict.

Moreover, the report concludes that Legislative Decree No. 36 of 2023 was designed specifically to ensure the release of drug users, deserters, military servicemen, and criminals who committed misdemeanors and infractions. Meanwhile, the decree excludes all prisoners of conscience and detainees arrested in the context of the conflict, which leaves it devoid of legal meaning and with no real bearing on the release of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons held in regime detention centers. Also, the frequent nature of the regime’s issuance of amnesty decrees, which are not aimed at political prisoners, only harms the state’s penal policies, since these decrees lead to the release of thousands of actual offenders. The exceptionally frequent release of these amnesty decrees also leads to many dysfunctions in court procedures at all levels. At this point, many judges are deferring their decisions on legal rulings in many cases since they may be included in future decrees.

The report warns the UN Security Council and the UN to be wary of accepting the claims made by the regime about its amnesty decrees, which lack any credibility both in theory and practice, and calls for the release of detainees whose arrest and detention are based on false grounds with no evidence. Rather, these prisoners have been arrested for rightfully demanding their right to political change and expression.

The report also calls on the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) to provide an honest and clear picture of the true meaninglessness of the amnesty decrees issued by the Syrian regime to the UN Security Council and the whole world. Furthermore, the report calls on the Syrian regime to dissolve the exceptional Counterterrorism Court, and repeal any rulings issued by the Military Field Court since they lack the most basic foundations of justice. Also, the report states, the regime should compensate those affected by those courts and rulings, and restore their legal and personal rights, in addition to making various other recommendations.

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The Hague – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) today released its 12^th annual report on enforced disappearance in Syria, in observance of the International Day of the Disappeared that marks August 30 of every year. The group noted that no fewer than 112,713 of the people arrested in Syria since March 2011 are still forcibly disappeared, including 3,105 children and 6,698 women.

The44-page report outlines numerous incidents of enforced disappearance and includes many accounts of victims’ families. The report notes that the ongoing incidence of enforced disappearances in Syria, perpetrated by the various parties to the conflict and controlling forces in the country, is one of the most complex and monstrous violations that has haunted the nation for 12 years to date. This is because the phenomenon of enforced disappearance in Syria involves a sequential string of gross violations, from arbitrary arrest to unlawful detention and deprivation of personal freedom, as well as torture in its various physical, psychological, and sexual forms, and exceptional trials involving summary and secretive procedures. Enforced disappearance, by its very nature, usually takes place hidden from view, with forcibly disappeared persons lacking all and any forms of protection and legal and human rights monitoring. That is to say that their most fundamental rights are deliberately denied in detention centers, where they are additionally subjected to agonizing and severe torture and absolute medical negligence. Moreover, while all parties to the conflict have resorted to use of enforced disappearance as a means to intimidate society, spread fear, and consolidate control, the Syrian regime’s security machine uses enforced disappearance in a widespread and systematic manner, viewing it as an extremely effective instrument with which to subjugate and crush any aspirations for change, freedom, and democracy. Through its ruthless use of enforced disappearance, the Syrian regime has massively surpassed all other parties to the conflict by inflicting and perpetuating use of this terrible strategy against all groups in Syrian society, whether men, women or children, the very old or very young, without showing the slightest shred of human decency or consideration and without making any exception for the most vulnerable victims.

Fadel Abdul Ghany, SNHR Executive Director, says:

“Enforced disappearance is one of the most prominent reasons why millions of IDPs and refugees refuse to return to their homes. In today’s Syria, forcibly disappeared persons account for approximately five percent of the total Syrian population numbered at roughly 24 million. Five percent is an extremely and alarmingly high percentage, and is the worst in the world. This is without mentioning the other agonies that forcibly disappeared persons suffer, such as torture, seizure of properties and lands, and family disintegration.”

The report outlines the toll of enforced disappearance since the beginning of the popular uprising for freedom in Syria in March 2011 up until August 2023. The report mainly focuses on the violations committed by SNHR’s team during the past year, August 2022 to August 2023. In this, the report stresses that the Syrian regime continues to tamper with laws and records and continues to record more forcibly disappeared persons as dead in the civil registry records. Additionally, the report presents an outline of the most notable figures who hold leadership positions in the Syrian regime’s security agencies, security/committees, and military bodies, which are involved in enforced disappearance crimes against tens of thousands of Syrians.

The report mainly draws upon SNHR’s regularly updated database that we created and which we’ve developed over the past 12 years. The report also draws upon interviews with enforced disappearance victims’ families from across Syria, with 18 accounts included in this report that have been gathered directly, and not taken from any second-hand sources.

As the report further clarifies, the newly formed UN institution on missing persons in Syria will undoubtedly galvanize efforts at both the Syrian and international levels in support for resolving the missing persons issue, and perhaps lead to the creation of a central database with a platform to enable tens of thousands of families to safely contact it. While we welcome this development, there are, nonetheless, a number of concerns regarding this new body that need to be addressed. First, in its current development stage, the new body does not have a clearly defined role in ensuring the release of arbitrarily arrested detainees; second, there is no explicit text referring to holding those responsible for perpetrating violations in Syria accountable; third, the predictable lack of cooperation by the parties to the conflict will complicate its mandate in revealing the fate of the missing.

The report also reveals that SNHR is in regular and continuous contact with the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the UN Special Rapporteur on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism- Specific work on victims of terrorism, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health on these cases. Since March 2011, the report further reveals, SNHR has briefed the UN Working Group on no fewer than 593 enforced disappearance cases; including those of dozens of women, children, and whole families. In addition, we are still documenting and processing hundreds of cases in accordance with our rigorous methodology.

As the report reveals, no fewer than 155,604 of the people arrested in Syria between March 2011 and August 2023, including 5,213 children and 10,176 women (adult female), are still under arrest and/or forcibly disappeared by the parties to the conflict and controlling forces. Of these, the Syrian regime holds 135,638 individuals, including 3,693 children and 8,478 women, while no fewer than 8,684 individuals, including 319 children and 255 women, have been forcibly disappeared by ISIS. Furthermore, 2,514, including 46 children and 45 women, are still detained/forcibly disappeared at the hands of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Meanwhile, no fewer than 4,064 individuals, including 364 children and 874 women, are still detained/forcibly disappeared at the hands of all armed opposition factions/Syrian National Army (SNA), in addition to 4,704 individuals, including 791 children and 524 women, who are still detained/forcibly disappeared at the hands of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Moreover, no fewer than 112,713 of the individuals arrested between March 2011 and August 2023, including 3,105 children and 6,698 women (adult female), are still forcibly disappeared by the parties to the conflict and controlling forces in Syria. Of those, the Syrian regime is holding or has forcibly disappeared 96,103 individuals, including 2,327 children and 5,739 women, while no fewer than 8,684 individuals, including 319 children and 255 women, have been forcibly disappeared by ISIS. Furthermore, the report notes that 2,162 people, including 17 children and 32 women, are still detained/forcibly disappeared at the hands of HTS. Meanwhile, no fewer than 2,943 individuals, including 256 children and 563 women, are still detained/forcibly disappeared at the hands of all armed opposition factions/SNA, since 2011 in all of the areas currently and previous under their control, in addition to 2,821 individuals, including 186 children and 109 women, who are still detained/forcibly disappeared at the hands of the SDF.

The report further stresses that all the amnesty decrees issued by the Syrina regime have completely failed to secure the release of any significant number of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons. These decrees have had no real effect or led to any transparency, or to any mechanisms that might ensure the release of all detainees and forcibly disappeared persons or compensate them. Put plainly, these decrees are a cruel political deception used to promote the appearance of the Syrian regime’s taking action in order to alleviate international pressure on it while in reality further exploiting and extorting the families of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons. In this context, the report notes that no fewer than 7,351 individuals (6,086 civilians and 1,265 military servicemen) have been released from the Syrian regime’s various civilian and military prisons and detention centers across Syria in relation to the 22 amnesty decrees issued by the regime between March 2011 and October 2022. Of those 6,086 civilians, 349 are women and 159 were children at the time of their arrest. We have recorded no releases in relation to the most recent amnesty decree issued by the Syrian regime on December 21, 2022, also known as Legislative Decree No. 24 of 2022.

The report also provides a running count of the toll of forcibly disappeared persons since March 2011, and its distribution by year and according to the parties to the conflict. As the report shows, the first four years of the popular uprising for freedom saw the largest waves of enforced disappearance, with 2012 being the worst, followed by 2013, then 2011, and then 2014.

Additionally, the report shows a distribution of enforced disappearances by governorate (i.e., where enforced disappearances took place, rather than the victim’s governorate of origin) at the hands of the parties to the conflict and controlling forces in Syria. According to the report, Rural Damascus (Rif Dimshaq) governorate saw the highest number of enforced disappearances, followed by Aleppo, then Damascus, and then Deir Ez-Zour.

The report further notes that, since the beginning of 2018, the Syrian regime has been recording some of the forcibly disappeared persons as dead in the civil registry records. The report reveals that the Syrian regime has disclosed the deaths of no fewer than 1,609 individuals, including 24 children, 21 women, and 16 medical personnel, in the civil registry records since the beginning of 2018 up until August 2023. The causes of these victims’ deaths were not provided in these records, while their bodies have not been returned to their families, and their deaths were not announced when they took place. The report stresses that the Syrina regime has employed its institutions at multiple levels to carry out these unlawful practices and tamper with the civil records of the disappeared, from the ministries of interior and justice to the officials at the civil registry offices across all of Syria.

Furthermore, the report stresses that arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances are two of the most serious risks facing internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees returning to regime-held areas, even for those who have never been involved in any dissident activism. As the report reveals, since the beginning of 2014, up until August 2023, no fewer than 3,376 refugees, including 246 children and 212 women (adult female), who returned from their countries of asylum or residence to their original areas of residence in Syria have been arrested by Syrian regime forces. A total of 2,094 of these detainees were released, while 926 of the remaining 1,282 detainees, most of whom returned from Lebanon, Türkiye, and Jordan, have gone on to be classified as forcibly disappeared. In the same period, no fewer than 989 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who returned to regime-held areas were also arrested, including 22 children and 19 women. The Syrian regime released 246 of these IDPs, while of the remaining 743, a total of 538 have gone on to become forcibly disappeared persons. We have also documented that the Syrian regime re-arrested some of the 246 released detainees in order to forcibly conscript them into the military.

Moreover, the report stresses that hundreds of figures holding leadership positions in the Syrian regime’s security agencies, military divisions, and military and security committees are or have been involved in the violations committed against the Syrian people and the Syrian state since 2011. Enforced disappearance has been practiced in a systematic and widespread way under the direct supervision of the Syrian regime’s entire leadership hierarchy, starting with the President of the Republic, who directly controls the ministries of interior and defense, the National Security Bureau, and their various security agencies and security and military committees. In this context, it should be noted that decisions on appointments, promotions, and transfers of officials heading security agencies are taken through the orders and decrees issued exclusively by the President of the Republic. In this context, the report provides names and brief summaries on some of the figures most heavily involved in forcibly disappearing tens of thousands of Syrians as documented on SNHR’s database on the perpetrators of violations.

The report notes that the Syrian regime has failed to uphold any of its obligations dictated by the international conventions and instruments it has ratified, in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Furthermore, the Syrian regime has violated multiple articles in the Syrian Constitution written and adopted by the very same regime. In this, the Syrian regime continues to detain hundreds of thousands of detainees who have been held for many years with no arrest warrant or charges. These detainees are also denied any opportunity to appoint a lawyer or receive visits from their families. Approximately, 68.25 percent of all detainees have gone on to become forcibly disappeared. These detainees’ families have not been informed of their whereabouts. If the desperately worried families try to inquire about the fate or whereabouts of their loved ones, security branches deny any knowledge of them, and the family members are themselves at risk of persecution for asking.

The report further stresses that enforced disappearance has been practiced as part of a widespread attack against all groups of the civilian population, with the Syrian regime being the main perpetrator of this crime by a vast margin compared to other parties to the conflict. In the Syrian regime’s case, this constitutes a crime against humanity according to Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and is also a war crime according to Article 8 of the same instrument since it was committed “as part of a plan or policy” primarily by the Syrian regime in its response to the popular uprising for freedom.

The report adds that other parties to the conflict have practiced enforced disappearance, albeit not with the same standardized character and prevalence as that of the Syrian regime. There is also a difference in terms of the quantity and distribution of cases. However, the cases of HTS and ISIS bear a similarity to the Syrian regime’s in terms of the wide distribution and systematic nature of cases.

The report calls on the UN Security Council and the UN to protect tens of thousands of detainees and persons forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime from the certain risk of dying due to torture, and to save those who are still alive. In addition, the report calls on the UN Security Council and the UN to work to reveal the fate of forcibly disappeared persons in tandem with, or before launching further rounds of any political process, and establish a strict timetable to reveal their fate.

The report also calls on the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to increase the levels of manpower working on the forcibly disappeared persons issue at the office of the Special Rapporteur on cases of enforced disappearance in Syria in light of the magnitude and massive level of enforced disappearance in the country, in addition to making a number of other recommendations.

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Press Release:

Paris – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has released a report entitled, ‘SNHR Obtains Hundreds of Death Certificates for Forcibly Disappeared Persons by the Syrian Regime, Their Families Have Not been Notified of Their Deaths, and Civil Register Offices Have Not Announced Them’, in which it reveals that the Syrian regime has registered thousands of forcibly disappeared persons as dead, including prominent activists from the popular uprising against its rule.
The 29-page report explains that in early 2018, SNHR noticed that many families with forcibly disappeared relatives held in regime detention centers had begun receiving death certificates issued for their missing relatives. The documents in question were issued without any regime organ issuing any official notification. Instead, the families simply learnt of the existence of these death certificates when visiting civil register offices to conduct regular transactions and file paperwork. As the news spread, hundreds of other families of forcibly disappeared persons flocked to civil register offices to obtain family statements in the hope that these might contain information about the fate of their own missing loved ones.
Since the beginning of 2022, the report adds, SNHR has been receiving death certificates issued by regime authorities for individuals whose cases had not been revealed before, and whose families were unaware of their status. Those death certificates were not obtained through the civil register offices either. Some of these death certificates were issued for very prominent activists from the popular uprising against the Syrian regime, as well as for women and children. SNHR, consequently, utilized its own network of relationships and sources in Syria, which we have built up over the past 11 years, to obtain hundreds of new death certificates. At this point, SNHR’s team has accrued great experience with respect to reviewing and verifying certificates.
Fadel Abdul Ghany, director of SNHR says:
“We have stressed previously that the Syrian regime may have recorded the deaths of hundreds of detainees who were forcibly disappeared in its detention centers at the civil registry. We also noted that such practices may even date back to before 2018, but were only revealed by the Syrian regime at the beginning of 2018, yet we never had proof of this before now. After obtaining hundreds of death certificates that have never been made public before, we can now confirm as a fact what we have long suspected, namely that the families of these dead people were never notified that their loved ones had been registered as dead at the civil registry. We are referring here to people who were arrested by the Syrian regime and who then went on to become forcibly disappeared, with no-one knowing anything about their fate. We seriously fear that the tens of thousands of other people still classified as forcibly disappeared in the Syrian regime’s detention centers have also met their demise.”
As the report reveals, between 2018 and 2021, SNHR received and stored approximately 1,062 death certificates. Since the beginning of 2022, we have obtained 547 new death certificates that were not issued by civil register offices. Additionally, the families of the persons named in those documents had not been made aware of their loved ones’ deaths. As such, SNHR holds the Syrian regime responsible for the killing of 547 Syrian citizens who were forcibly disappeared in its prisons.
A total of 1,609 of the individuals forcibly disappeared in regime detention centers between the start of 2018 and November 2022 have now been registered as dead, including 24 children, 21 women (adult female), and 16 medics. Nonetheless, these documents do not specify any cause of death. Furthermore, the Syrian regime has failed to return the bodies of those certified as dead to their families or even to inform them of their loved ones’ grave location, as well as failing to notify any of the families of their loved ones’ deaths at the time when they occurred. Among these cases are four that were previously identified in leaked photos from the Syrian regime’s military hospitals.
On analyzing the data, one finds that the largest percentage of the 1,609 cases recorded were arrested by Syrian regime forces in 2012, followed by 2013, then 2014. Notably, those three years also recorded the highest rates of enforced disappearances into regime detention centers as documented on SNHR’s database.
Furthermore, 2014 saw the largest percentage of the 1,609 cases documented according to the death certificates issued by the civil register offices, followed by 2013, and then 2015. Notably, those years also saw the highest documented toll of deaths due to torture at the hand of Syrian regime forces according to SNHR’s database. Additionally, Damascus suburbs governorate saw the highest figures of all Syrian governorate in terms of the number of victims of enforced disappearance recorded, with at least 15,703 persons from that governorate documented as being forcibly disappeared. Damascus suburbs has the sixth largest toll of deaths due to torture across Syria with no fewer than 1,692 of the victims who died due to torture coming from that area.
The report stresses that the Syrian regime began registering forcibly disappeared persons as dead in 2013, but this information was not made publicly available until early 2018. In this, the report outlines the process adopted by the Syrian regime to register those deaths, describing it as a ‘a complex bureaucratic process’ that implicates multiple government institutions, the most important of which are the state security apparatuses. The process starts at the National Security Office, Syria’s highest military and security authority, which is headed by the President of the Republic, at the request of the heads of the security agencies and military prisons. The National Security Office sends special reports on those who died in detention centers, together with their personal information and cause of death, to the Military Police. These reports and data are submitted to the Military Police, as well as to the National Security Office, in a phased fashion over time. From there, the office organizes the data and sends it to the Ministry of Interior, again in batches, with the interior ministry in turn resending it to the secretaries of the civil register offices according to which the civil registry stores the information on each of the dead detainees in question. Thereafter, civil register office employees enter the incidents of death into their records in line with the instructions received.
The report notes that there are two types of death data in the civil register offices: The first type are those death certificates issued to the families of the deceased by the civil register offices upon the families filing the paperwork requesting a death certificate. In most of these documents the place of death is given as Damascus, which houses the largest number of detention centers where deaths of forcibly disappeared persons take place. However, the death certificates issued do not specify in which detention center the victims’ death took place. The second type are the death certificates that are not accessible to families, with this data remaining stored at the civil register offices. Notably, these certificates include the place of death. SNHR has been able to obtain a number of those death certificates, with most giving Tishreen Military Hospital or the Field Military Court as the place of death. We believe this indicates that the victims in question received a death sentence.

The report stresses that the system adopted by the Syrian regime to register forcibly disappeared persons dead without notifying their families is a damning demonstration of the regime’s fascism and its chilling contempt for the lives of its citizens who are subjected to a level of barbarism that blatantly violates every norm and law. It seems that these strategies are deliberately designed and calculated, so as to cause the greatest psychological trauma to the families of the missing to continue the regime’s policy of collective punishment against everyone who was involved in or supportive of the popular uprising for democracy since March 2011. In many cases, families are terrified to reveal the death of their forcibly disappeared loved ones, or to arrange a funeral for them, fearing that doing so may put themselves and other family members at risk of being questioned or persecuted by the regime’s security agencies.
The report concludes that the Syrian regime has failed to uphold the legal protocols and procedures of registering deaths at its detention centers, which should be done through the public attorney or their deputy who, according to the law, is supposed to deal with incidents of death in custody and submit their findings to the secretary of the civil record within the legally specified time. In this, the Syrian regime has violated Articles 38 and 39 of Law No. 13 of 2012 which includes the new Syrian Civil State Law. Additionally, the Syrian regime has violated the legal protocols and regulations related to graves. According to the Syrian Penal Code, burying the dead is a crime if it is done for the purpose of hiding the death.
The report proves that, through the strategy of enforced disappearance, the Syrian regime is further terrorizing and collectively punishing anyone and everyone connected with or supportive of the popular uprising against the Assad family’s dictatorial rule. On analysis of this data, one can clearly see that such strategies are common regime practice, particularly in the areas of Syria that famously joined the uprising, in a way that demonstrates a consistent and deliberate policy and system. Enforced disappearance is prohibited according to customary international law; Rule 98 prohibits enforced disappearance in international and non-international armed conflicts.
The report recommends that the UN Security Council and the United Nations hold an emergency meeting to discuss the Syrian regime’s registering tens of thousands of forcibly disappeared persons as dead, while failing to notify the victims’ families of those deaths. Additionally, the report calls on the United Nations and the Security Council to issue a Resolution under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter condemning the Syrian regime’s killing of forcibly disappeared persons in regime detention centers, and demanding that the regime reveals their fate.
Furthermore, the report calls on the international community to act urgently and decisively to save the remaining detainees before they meet the fate of death due to torture and abysmal imprisonment conditions, as well as to take serious steps towards helping achieve political change to save the Syrian people from dictatorship and despotism, in addition to making a number of other recommendations.

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Press Release:

Paris – the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) today released its latest report, “Breaking Down the Amnesty Decrees Issued by the Syrian Regime Between March 2011 and October 2022”, noting that although a total of 7,531 detainees who were arbitrarily arrested have been released under the decrees issued by the Syrian regime, roughly 135,253 are still detained and/or forcibly disappeared.

The 47- report notes that arbitrary arrests have been among the most prominent and widespread violations perpetrated by the Syrian regime against participants in the popular uprising since it began in March 2011. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fallen victim to the Syrian regime’s arrest machine, with their cases devoid of any clear charges or evidence. They have been arrested for political reasons, grounded in the Syrian regime’s battle to survive without making any meaningful political changes. Therefore, those are unlawful arbitrary arrests that violate international human rights law, as well as the Syrian constitution and domestic laws. The report draws upon SNHR’s daily and ongoing monitoring of arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture since 2011.
The report outlines the findings of the analysis carried out by the SNHR team of legislative amnesty decrees related to pardoning detainees previously held in the Syrian regime’s detention centers, with all this material carefully cross-checked with SNHR’s constantly maintained archive on arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, and torture that extends to date from March 2011 to October 2022. The report is concerned solely with arrests we documented that coincided with amnesty decrees and the releases relating to these arrests as documented on SNHR’s database, and is not concerned with any other releases unrelated to amnesty decrees.
The report draws upon interviews we have conducted with former detainees who were released as a result of the amnesty decrees, and with detainees who are still incarcerated in civilian prisons across Syria, most notably Hama Central Prison, Homs Central Prison, and Suwayda Central Prison, as well as with the families of the detainees and forcibly disappeared persons who fell prey to fraud operations related to the amnesty decrees. The report contains eight first-hand accounts from across Syria.
Fadel Abdul Ghany, Director of SNHR, says:
“We have worked tirelessly for months to provide a comprehensive picture of the amnesty decrees issued by the Syrian regime. We have explained the context and effect for each decree by monitoring the subsequent releases. We present this report as a document before decision-makers and UN organs to prove that the cases of arbitrary arrest or enforced disappearance for which the Syrian regime is responsible are infinitely greater in numbers than the cases in which detainees were released. This report also proves that the Syrian regime uses detainees as hostages, as our databases show a harrowing number of nearly 136,000 Syrian citizen who are either still under arrest or disappeared, all of whom must be released.”

The report notes that a total of 21 amnesty decrees have been issued by the Syrian regime since March 2011. The majority of those decrees nullified the entirety, half, or quarter of the pardonees’ sentences for the various crimes and criminal offenses in question. These amnesties were concerned with particular articles and sentences related to individuals who had been detained for expressing political views or taking part in the popular uprising. The pardoned individuals also included military servicemen who had defected and were pardoned on condition that they surrender themselves within a certain period specified by each decree, which usually lasted for several months from the time the decree was issued. Some decrees were extensions of previous decrees, especially those concerning military servicemen or civilians who took up arms, so as to enable them to surrender themselves.
The report also sheds light on the significant difference between general amnesties and special amnesties. To that end, the report clarifies that issuing general amnesties is a rarity, since these undermine the state’s penal policies and capacity to combat crimes. It would appear that this was a deliberate policy by the Syrian regime which released some criminal detainees in order to incorporate many of them into the local militias founded by the regime to defend itself.

The report outlines the amnesty decrees issued by the Syrian regime between March 2011 and October 2022. As the report shows, these are divided by case into general and partial amnesties (11 amnesty decrees) and special amnesty decrees for military crimes which were aimed primarily at military servicemen (10 amnesty decrees).
The report stresses that all the decrees were issued by the President of the Republic, who heads the executive authority, in violation of the Syrian Penal Code. The People’s Assembly, namely the legislative branch with the authority to study and approve general amnesty decrees, has never issued any amnesty laws. This is just one of the many manifestations of the executive authority in Syria co-opting the legislative authority. SNHR suspects that Bashar al-Assad has issued such a large number of amnesties in order to depict himself as a dictator strongman with absolute power over the lives of the Syrian people. He, and only he, gets to dictate who is pardoned whenever he pleases, however he pleases. Those decrees are simply an assertion of the despotic rule that gives him absolute power to dismiss the constitution, and disregard constitutional law, and the very spirit of law to do as he pleases.

As the report reveals, a total of 7,531 arbitrarily arrested individuals (6,086 civilians and 1,265 military servicemen) were released from the regime’s various civilian and military prisons and security branches across Syria in accordance with 21 amnesty decrees issued between March 2011 and October 2022. Of the 6,086 civilians released, 349 were women, while 159 were children at the time of their arrest. The report notes that 2012 saw the highest number of civilians documented as being released, through Decree No. 10/2012, followed by 2014 with Decree No. 22/2014, and then 2013 with Decree No. 23/2013. Meanwhile, the highest number of military servicemen released was recorded in 2015 through Decree No. 32/2015, followed by 2013 with Decree No. 70/2013, and then 2012 with Decree No. 30/2012.

The report stresses that the Syrian regime is still carrying out arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances irrespective of the amnesty decrees, which only result in a very limited number of releases, while arbitrary arrests continue in a widespread manner. The report outlines the large numbers of arbitrary arrests between every two amnesty decrees. In this aspect, the period of time between Legislative Decree No. 10, issued on January 2012, and Decree No. 71, issued on October 23, 2012, saw the highest number of arbitrary arrests documented. The report also compares between the releases resulting from the 21 amnesty decrees and the individuals who are still under arrest or enforced disappearance tandem with or after the issuance of those decrees between March 2011 and October 2022. The report finds that the number of people arrested or disappeared by Syrian regime forces following the issuing of amnesty decrees is 17 times greater than the number released in accordance with the 21 decrees.
According to the report, no fewer than 135,253 individuals, including 3,684 children, and 8,469 women (adult female), are still under arrest or enforced disappearance. Of those, 95,696 individuals, including 2,316 children, and 5,734 women (adult female) have been forcibly disappeared at the hands of Syrian regime between March 2011 and August 2022 despite the 21 amnesty decrees. It is important to note that the highest number of individuals detained or forcibly disappeared in the Syrian regime’s detention centers was documented in the year 2012, followed by 2013, 2011, and then 2014; these are also the years that saw the highest number of amnesty decrees, with a total of 10 amnesty decrees, or almost half of all the amnesty decrees issued to date since 2011 being issued during these years. As such, it’s clear that amnesty decrees are usually issued in parallel with rising arbitrary arrest campaigns.

As the report further reveals, most amnesty decrees insisted that any wanted/fugitive individuals must surrender themselves as a precondition for being included in the amnesty, especially for special amnesty decrees for military crimes. Still, some special decrees were issued for fugitives such as Decree No. 15/2016 that granted a pardon to anyone who had escaped ‘justice’ for taking up arms. Amid the dire living conditions facing Syrians in light of displacement, persecution, inability to work or travel and other problems, hundreds chose to surrender themselves in the hope of being pardoned. However, many of them were detained for months or years, and a large proportion were subjected to torture and enforced disappearance, with the majority being referred to extraordinary courts, effectively breaching the amnesty decrees issued by the Syrian regime itself. On this issue, the report records that of the 1,867 individuals who surrendered themselves to the regime in line with the amnesty decrees issued between March 2011 and October 2022 -with 1,013 of these being military servicemen and the remaining 854 civilians – a total of 1,833 went on to be classified as forcibly disappeared, while no fewer than 34 died due to torture or medical negligence, or receiving death sentences at the regime’s Field Military Court. Most of those individuals surrendered themselves following the issuance of Legislative Decree No. 15/2016; Legislative Decree No. 22, issued on June 9, 2014; Legislative Decree No. 18, issued on October 9, 2018; and Legislative Decree No. 20, issued on September 14, 2019, and after the majority of them had rectified their security situation with security apparatuses.

The report also draws attention to the extortion and fraud networks sponsored by the regime’s security apparatus itself, not to mention other networks composed of individuals who are professional scammers and have ties with the regime’s security services. Those networks usually see a significant increase in activity in the wake of each amnesty decrees and use various means, such as their ability to access information about detainees or forcibly disappeared persons, either through their ties with the security services or by accessing the data available via open sources. These criminal networks, which use this information to deceive and extort detainees’ families, include officers, lawyers, judges, and civilians with influence who have gained great experience over the past 12 years in detecting and gauging the reactions of the families who increasingly fall into their trap. On the other hand, some families deal with those networks, despite being fully aware they are part of a fraudulent scam operation, in the faint hope of obtaining some information about their loved ones. In this context, the report has recorded no fewer than 1,574 incidents of extortion and fraud since Amnesty Decree No. 7/2022 was issued (between the start of May 2022 and October 2022), including families who had received information about the death of their relatives and even extracted official death certificates from the relevant authorities, but who were still lured and cheated under a tremendous burden of desperate grief and uncertainty.
According to the report, such extortion and fraud have not been limited to the families of the forcibly-disappeared, but have also targeted detainees at civil prisons and security branches across Syria, including detainees included in the amnesty decrees, due to the Ministry of Justice’s failure to publish lists of names included in amnesty decrees. Instead, the ministry adopts an unclear. misleading, and painfully slow manner in implementing the decrees, with uncertainty increased by the fact that release decisions ultimately rest in the hands of the security services, rather than being based on considerations of the detainees’ legal status. Because of these points, detainees at central prisons often choose to deal with fraudsters and corrupt networks, and with individuals with ties with judges in the hopes that this can ensure a review of their cases, get them included in an amnesty, or accelerate the process of their release.

The report adds that the overwhelming majority of the sentences issued in the Counterterrorism Court and the Field Military Court included seizure of detainees’ movable and immovable properties and deprivation of civil rights as an additional punishment to imprisonment. As the report reveals, hundreds of those released due to amnesty decrees were unable to retrieve their seized properties. On one hand, the amnesty laws were ambiguous regarding this issue and did not clarify seizure or asset-freezing decisions, while on the other, the released individuals opted to steer away from attempting to retrieve their properties in fear of again being persecuted by the security branches. The report stresses that, theoretically at least, the defendant’s movable and immovable properties and their revenues, or more particularly the properties owned by the defendant prior to the commitment of the crime they’re charged with that were not used in the commission of the crime, were not prepared to be used in the commission of the crime, and which were unrelated to the crime, should not be seized and must be restored to the individuals included in the amnesty. In reality, nonetheless, the executive authority (government, ministry of finance and other regime bodies) delays any restoration of properties and funds, with a released individual needing to resort to the civilian or administrative court to lift the seizure, which is a process that comes with its own exhausting procedures, delays, and costs in litigation and lawyer fees.

The report stresses that no legal grounds exist for criminalizing political detainees and leveling criminal charges against them. Neither does the Counterterrorism Law provide any such grounds, especially considering its vague phrasing which completely contradicts what a sound legislative criminal text should be, and nor does the Public Penal Code. Those charges are usually based on ‘confessions’ extracted under torture and coercion, especially in the cases of the Field Military Courts. These ‘courts’ are not actual courts in any recognized legal and judicial sense, but are military entities affiliated with the regime’s security apparatus, as is clear from their denying defendants the most basic guarantees of a due and just legal process, such as the right to a lawyer, to public trial, and to appeal.

The report warns the Security Council and the UN against being duped by the Syrian regime’s amnesty decrees, which, it stresses, lack any sense of credibility or plausibility, both in structure and in implementation. The report additionally calls on the Security Council and the UN to demand that unjustly incarcerated detainees be released since they were arrested based on no evidence, solely because they demanded their rights to political change and freedom of expression. Furthermore, the report calls on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to issue a statement condemning the Syrian regime’s toying with the issue of political detainees and its continued detention of tens of thousands of Syrian citizens without a fair trial or actual evidence, as well as making a number of other recommendations.

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Press release: (Download the full report below)

Paris – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reveals in its report released today that it has received notification from the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) that it submitted several cases, provided by SNHR this year, to the Syrian regime, noting that at least 95,696 persons have been forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, with SNHR seeking to register as many of these cases as possible with the United Nations group.

The seven-page report notes that the cooperation between the SNHR and the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances extends over many years, with the SNHR and WGEID having bi-weekly correspondence on the cases of enforced disappearance that SNHR has documented; after being notified of the latest cases, the United Nations WGEID then verifies these cases again, and selects some of them to raise in its correspondence with the Syrian regime. Whilst the WGEID usually focuses on more recent cases in this context rather than those that occurred in previous years, the report notes that SNHR has supplied more than 568 enforced disappearance cases, all by Syrian Regime forces, including tens of cases of women and children. In addition to hundreds other cases that will be sent in the coming months.

The report sheds light on the challenges facing the documentation process involving cases of enforced disappearance, more especially if the arrested individual is female, due to a well-founded fear still prevalent in Syrian society that being discovered to be doing so by the regime would result in more torture and increased danger for their loved ones and themselves. This has been reinforced by the failure of the international community and of all the organs of the United Nations to apply pressure on the Syrian regime authorities to release even one individual (including those whose sentences are completed), even prisoners of conscience.

The report further notes that SNHR obtains the victims’ families’ consent in all cases of enforced disappearance before submitting their data to the United Nations WGEID.

The report stresses that enforced disappearance is among the most serious and grave human rights violations due to the horrendous abuses to which victims are subjected, including torture and other cruel, degrading and abusive treatment, as well as unjust deprivation of freedom, against all of which these individuals are wholly defenseless, denied any legal protection and stripped of any human rights, with their torturers and abusers having the literal power of life and death. Detainees are also denied their fundamental political and civil rights, which are interdependent and interrelated rights, such as the right of the individual to recognition before the law, freedom, fair trial and judicial guarantees. Enforced disappearance, as the report notes, also generally violates the economic, social and cultural rights of victims and their families alike, such as the right to provision of protection and assistance to the family and the right to an adequate standard of living given that enforced disappearance causes families most often to lose the primary or sole breadwinner.

The report notes that the Syrian regime has perpetrated enforced disappearances in the context of a widespread attack against all civilian population groups. The Syrian regime, which has issued orders to its forces to carry out arrests and enforced disappearances, is fully aware of their effect, which constitutes a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This crime is, therefore, not subject to the statute of limitations and the same article gives the victims’ families the right to reparation and to know the fate of the disappeared. It is also considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute itself, being practiced against opponents calling for political change.

The report calls on the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to increase the number of personnel working on the Syrian issue, given that Syria is suffering an immense national catastrophe in the context of enforced disappearances due to the massive numbers of persons forcibly disappeared since March 2011, which makes it the worst affected country worldwide concerning this violation.

The report underscores that SNHR has supported all the demands of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria regarding the need to establish an independent UN mechanism whose task is limited to the issue of missing persons, including the forcibly disappeared, given the large numbers of those affected in Syria. The need for this mechanism is an urgent requirement for all missing victims and their families. Furthermore, we have submitted a report on our vision for this mechanism to the OHCHR, and have asserted that we will cooperate with it once it is established, and are ready to provide it with the information and data that have been documented in our database over eleven years.

The report also recommends that the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances should correspond with the Syrian regime concerning the largest possible number of cases submitted, which may contribute to efforts to disclose the fate of these forcibly disappeared, and should constitute a kind of deterrent, however simple, impeding the murder of these detainees under torture by the Syrian regime.

The report emphasizes the need for the forcibly disappeared persons’ families to cooperate with reliable human rights organizations and provide them with data on the forcibly disappeared persons among their family members, and approve their correspondence with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, since this notification constitutes a kind of warning to the Syrian regime and may contribute to preventing its killing of forcibly disappeared persons.

The report notes that the registration of forcibly disappeared persons’ cases with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and their inclusion within the annex to the periodic report issued by it is considered an important document in the hands of their families, proving the case of enforced disappearance and demanding, through the WGEID, accountability and reparations in the course of transitional justice later, as well as proving the continuation of the Syrian regime’s strategy in this context.

The report urges the Group of Friends of the Syrian People at the Brussels Conference to establish an effective mechanism that contributes to revealing the fate of the forcibly disappeared persons in Syria, and supports the families of the victims, and to support the work of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the national organizations working in this field.

The report also calls on the UN Security Council and the United Nations to resort to Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations to protect detainees from death in detention centers, and to put an end to the pandemic of enforced disappearance that is widespread across Syria, as it threatens the security and stability of society.

The report stresses the need for the Security Council to follow up on the implementation of and compel all parties to abide by the resolutions it has issued, most notably Resolution No. 2042 and Resolution No. 2139, and ensure that these theoretical resolutions be realized by action.

Finally, the report calls on the Syrian regime to stop terrorizing the Syrian population through enforced disappearances, torture, and death due to torture, to accept responsibility for all legal and material consequences, and to compensate the victims and their families from the resources of the Syrian state.

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Press release: (Download the full report below)

Paris – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) issues its 11th annual report on enforced disappearance in Syria on the occasion of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, which takes place on August 30 each year. In this latest report, SNHR reveals that the number of people detained since March 2011 who still remain forcibly disappeared as of August 2022 has now reached at least 111,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom were detained by the Syrian regime, constituting a crime against humanity.

The 48-page report, which provides details on a large number of enforced disappearance incidents, as well as testimonies from victims’ families, reveals that the phenomenon of enforced disappearance in Syria is organically linked to the phenomenon of arbitrary arrest, with most of those subjected to arbitrary detention going on to be classified as forcibly disappeared. The report adds that the Syrian regime has targeted participants in political demonstrations against its rule with widespread arbitrary arrests since the early days of the popular uprising in March 2011, and has systematically used enforced disappearance as one of its most notorious tools of repression and terrorism aimed at crushing and destroying political opponents simply for expressing their opinion; the regime has also harnessed the capabilities of the security services and its tens of thousands of personnel to this end.
The report explains that the first years of the mass uprising saw the highest percentage of enforced disappearances because the demonstrations were taking place intensively, and within areas under the Syrian regime’s control, with the massive scale of the arrests and disappearances making the Syrian regime the worst perpetrator globally in the twenty-first century in terms of forcibly disappearing its citizens. The report further adds that the fate of the disappeared persons in al Tadamun neighborhood in Damascus is a stark example of the killing and execution that may have been the fate of thousands of persons ‘disappeared’ by Syrian regime forces even before they could be taken to detention centers.

As the report reveals, all parties to the conflict and the controlling forces have practiced widespread arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances of Syrian citizens in connection with the armed conflict, within the areas under their control, with the aim of intimidating political opponents and subjugating society in those areas. As the report further explains, the repercussions of the crime of enforced disappearance are not limited to the victims only, but also extend to their families, who suffer from loss, stress, years of waiting, and absolute helplessness, in the absence of any legal procedures they can take to assist their loved ones.

Fadel Abdul Ghany, SNHR’s Director, says:
“More than eleven years have passed, and we are still documenting the disappearance of Syrian citizens in Syrian territory, mainly by the Syrian regime, though also by the other parties to the conflict, with the new cases added to the many thousands of previous ones. The catastrophe is escalating, and there is no prospect for revealing the fate of tens of thousands of missing persons any time soon. Without achieving a political solution that ends the domination of the security services, there will be no release for any detainees, or even any disclosures about the fate of any of the forcibly disappeared persons, with the international community bearing the responsibility for prolonging the armed conflict for nearly twelve years.”

The report outlines the record of victims of enforced disappearance since the beginning of the popular uprising for democracy in March 2011 up to August 2022, focusing mainly on the violations documented by the SNHR team between August 30, 2021, and August 30, 2022. The report also details the Syrian regime’s continuing manipulation of laws through registering some of the disappeared persons as dead through its Civil Registry Departments. In addition, the report also provides the names of the most prominent leaders of the Syrian regime’s security services, army, military and security committees involved in the crime of enforced disappearance of tens of thousands of Syrian citizens.

The report relies mainly on data from the SNHR’s database, which the SNHR has been working on and building continuously for 11 years to date, as well as on the interviews we conducted with families of victims who were forcibly disappeared from different Syrian governorates. The report provides 18 first-hand accounts, which were obtained directly rather than from open sources.

The report recalls that the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (COI) was the first body to call for the establishment of an independent mechanism with an international mandate to coordinate and consolidate claims regarding missing persons, including persons subjected to enforced disappearance. This is an old demand, first proposed in COI’s first report issued in 2011. The SNHR has supported all the demands of the COI for the essential establishment of an international mechanism whose mission is limited to the issue of the missing persons, including persons subjected to enforced disappearance, given the large number of those affected in Syria; as the record of the forcibly disappeared persons alone shows, the immense number of people in this category makes the need for such a mechanism an urgent and imperative necessity for all missing victims and their families. In this regard, the report notes that the SNHR has submitted a report to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) about SNHR’s vision for this mechanism, and stresses that the SNHR will cooperate with it if it is established, and is ready to provide it with all the necessary information and data that it has documented on its database for eleven years to date.

The report reveals the regular periodic exchanges of correspondence conducted by the SNHR team with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, as well as with the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The report notes that since March 2011, the SNHR has been able to provide the WGEID with details on at least 568 cases of disappearance, including dozens of women, children, and families, and that it still has hundreds of cases whose data it has yet to register and process using SNHR’s methodology, which will then be submitted to the WGEID

The report notes that at least 154,398 of the individuals arrested between March 2011 and August 2022, including 5,161 children and 10,159 women (adult female), are still arrested/detained or forcibly disappeared at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria. Of these, 135,253 individuals, including 3,684 children and 8,469 women, are still detained or forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, while a further 8,684 individuals, including 319 children and 225 women, are still disappeared by ISIS, and 2,373 additional individuals, including 46 children and 44 women, are still detained or forcibly disappeared by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS).
In addition to these, the report further reveals that another 3,864 individuals, including 361 children and 868 women, are documented as being still detained or forcibly disappeared by all Armed Opposition factions/Syrian National Army, while 4,224 individuals, including 751 children and 523 women, are still detained or forcibly disappeared at the hands of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

As the report reveals, at least 111,907 individuals, including 3,041 children and 6,642 women, have been forcibly disappeared at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria between March 2011 and August 2022, with 95,696 of this total disappeared by Syrian regime forces, including 2,316 children and 5,734 women, and an additional 8,684 individuals, including 319 children and 225 women, disappeared by ISIS. Meanwhile, HTS was responsible for disappearing 2,071 individuals, including 14 children and 29 women.
The report also notes that 2,827 individuals, including 249 children and 517 women, are still forcibly disappeared by the various Armed Opposition factions/Syrian National Army since 2011 to date, in all the areas it controlled or controls, while 2,629 individuals, including 143 children and 107 women, are still forcibly disappeared by SDF.

The report further stresses that the huge number of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons held by the Syrian regime clearly confirms that all 20 of the amnesty decrees issued by the Syrian regime since 2011 did not lead to the release of even a small percentage of the tens of thousands of detainees and persons forcibly disappeared by the regime. Between May 1, 2022, and August 30, 2022, the report documents that the Syrian regime had released about 569 people under Decree No. 7 of 2022 from various regime civil and military prisons and security branches in a number of Syrian governorates, including 63 women and 17 people who were children at the time of their arrest. At least 162 of the 568 released people had settled their security status with the regime prior to their arrest and been given a supposed guarantee according to the terms of these settlements assuring them that they would not be persecuted by regime security authorities; 28 of those released, including four women, had been refugees or otherwise living outside Syria and were arrested on their return to the country.

This report provides a cumulative linear graph showing the documented record of enforced disappearances since March 2011, as well as providing a table showing the distribution of this record by year, showing that the first four years of the popular uprising for democracy saw the largest waves of enforced disappearances, with the annual record showing that 2012 was the worst year to date in terms of the number of people forcibly disappeared, followed by 2013 and 2011, then 2014.
The report also outlines the distribution of the record of the forcibly disappeared by the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria according to the Syrian governorates where the victims were arrested; that is, according to the place where the arrest took place, rather than the governorate which the detainee comes from, with Damascus Suburbs governorate seeing the highest record of victims of enforced disappearance, followed by Aleppo, Damascus, then Deir Ez-Zour.

The report notes that since early 2018, the Syrian regime has continued registering many of the detainees previously forcibly disappeared in its detention centers as dead in the official records maintained by the state Civil Registry departments, with the number of cases documented, as the report reveals, reaching at least 1,072 cases of forcibly disappeared persons, including nine children and two women, in which the Syrian regime revealed the fate of the disappeared through registering their deaths at Civil Registry offices, all of whom had died in detention, since the beginning of 2018 until August 2022. The regime failed to disclose the cause of death, with the families not being given their loved ones’ bodies or being informed of the place of their burial. The report adds that the Syrian regime has harnessed several levels of the Syrian state institutions to implement this procedure in violation of Syrian law and to manipulate the data on the forcibly disappeared recorded at the Civil Registry, with this blatantly illegal manipulation starting with the ministries of Interior and Justice, and extending to Civil Registry officials in all Syrian governorates.

The report adds that under international humanitarian law, commanders and other senior officials are held responsible for war crimes committed by their subordinates, further noting that enforced disappearance has been practiced according to a general, organized and systemic methodology, with a decision taken to employ this as a policy according to the chain of command that starts from the President of the Republic and is directly linked to him by the Ministries of Defense and Interior, the National Security Office, and the associated security services; the report provided the names of the most prominent leaders of the Syrian regime involved in the crime of enforced disappearance, according to the SNHR database of data of perpetrators of violations.

The report notes that the Syrian regime has demonstrated a lack of commitment to the international agreements and treaties it has ratified, particularly the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights. In addition, the Syrian regime has violated a number of articles of the Syrian constitution itself, detaining hundreds of thousands of detainees for many years without issuing any arrest warrants or bringing any charges against them. The regime has also denied those detainees the right to an attorney and barred their families from visiting them. Approximately 69% of all detainees have gone on to become enforced disappearance cases as the Syrian regime has never informed their families of their whereabouts. Any attempt by detainees’ family members to inquire about the whereabouts of their loved ones may put the families themselves at risk of being arrested.

The report further notes that enforced disappearances have been carried out in the context of a widespread attack against all civilian population groups. The Syrian regime was the first party to perpetrate the violation of enforced disappearances in Syria, and remains by far the most prolific perpetrator of this crime, with other parties left far behind in terms of the number of enforced disappearances, which constitute a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It is also considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute itself due to its being practiced as part of a systematic and public policy in the effort to crush the popular uprising for democracy, overwhelmingly by the Syrian regime.

The report adds that the other parties involved in Syria have also practiced the crime of enforced disappearance, although without the centralized and systematic nature of the Syrian regime, which differs from them in the vast quantity and distribution of cases, with the report noting that the ISIS group and HTS are similar to the Syrian regime in the widespread and systematic nature of such cases.

The report recommends that the UN Security Council and the United Nations should hold an emergency meeting to discuss this critical matter that threatens the fates of nearly 111,000 Syrian citizens and terrorizes the whole of Syrian society. The report also calls on them to work to reveal the fate of the forcibly disappeared persons in parallel with or prior to the start of the upcoming rounds of the political process and to set a strict timetable to reveal their fate.
The report concludes with a recommendation that the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances should increase the manpower available to work on the issue of forcibly disappeared persons at the office of the Special Rapporteur on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in Syria in light of the massive level and extent of cases of enforced disappearance in the country, as well as providing a number of other recommendations.

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Photo of Amjad Yousef, the main perpetrator of the mass killings in al Tadamun neighborhood in Damascus – April 2013

 
Press release:
Paris – The Syrian Network for Human Rights reveals in its latest report released today that the Syrian regime is currently holding the criminal Amjad Yousef, who killed dozens of Syrians in addition to raping dozens of women, in al Tadamun neighborhood in Damascus, noting that there are fears that the fate of the 87,000 people forcibly disappeared in regime prisons will be similar to that of the detainees murdered in al Tadamun neighborhood.

The three-page report notes that the Syrian regime is now holding the criminal Amjad Yousef, one of the main regime officers responsible for the killings and rapes in al Tadamun neighborhood. At the end of April 2022, New Lines magazine published an investigation that proved that Yousef, an officer in the Syrian regime’s security forces, specifically the ‘227 Region Branch’ of the Military Intelligence Division, was among those responsible for the arrest/kidnapping of dozens of Syrians in the neighborhood, with 41 of those detained there taken to a pit dug for the purpose of serving as a mass grave, where they were thrown in and shot dead before their bodies were set alight. The investigators managed to persuade Amjad Yousef into confessing to this terrible crime.

As the report reveals, the Syrian regime is now retaining Amjad Yousef in custody; since the detention process was not carried out according to a judicial warrant based on a specific charge, he has not been referred to the judiciary, and the Syrian regime has not issued any information indicating his arrest.

The report raises concern over the fate of the 87,000 people documented as being forcibly disappeared in regime prisons, which may be similar to that suffered by the victims in al Tadamun neighborhood. In this context, the report reveals that the Syrian regime has detained, and continues to detain, at least 131,469 of the people arrested since March 2011, with 86,792 of this number classified as forcibly disappeared persons, including 1,738 children and 4,986 women (adult female). The report stresses that the Syrian regime had not announced the identity of those who were killed by Amjad Yousef and his partners or informed the victims’ families of their deaths, with these victims having been classified as forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, although the investigation published by New Lines further confirmed that at least some of the forcibly disappeared are being liquidated in an unspeakably brutal manner with their bodies burned and buried in pits that serve as unmarked mass graves.

The report adds that the Syrian regime has systematically used enforced disappearance as one of its most prominent tools of repression and terrorism aimed at crushing and annihilating political opponents simply for expressing their opinion, harnessing the capabilities of the security services, which have tens of thousands of members, to hunt down those who participated in the popular uprising, and to arrest, torture and forcibly disappear them.

The report stresses that Amjad Yousef was involved with many Syrian regime bodies in carrying out these terrible crimes, and it seems that the regime fears that more of those involved will be exposed, and, for this end, may ‘disappear’ Amjad Yousef for life or kill him after he confessed his crimes, in order to thwart further investigation.

The report notes that the Syrian regime would not have detained Amjad Yousef if regime bodies had not been involved in this atrocity at the highest levels. The report further notes that the Syrian regime protects the perpetrators of violations, and in some cases promotes them, so that they’re aware that their own fate is always organically linked to the regime’s fate, and so that defending it becomes an essential part of defending themselves.

The report adds that Amjad Yousef and thousands of other members of the regime’s security services and army forces would not have committed such atrocious violations had they not been part of a deliberate policy implemented at the direct orders of the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar al Assad, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Armed Forces (army and security). Such large-scale violations need the coordination and cooperation of dozens of individuals and institutions, and while the Syrian regime must be aware of them, it has not only failed to institute any deterrence or accountability, but given the orders and facilitated their commission.

The report calls on the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the fate of the forcibly disappeared persons in Syria and to act to end torture and deaths due to torture inside Syrian regime detention centers, and to save whoever is left among the detainees as quickly as possible.

The report also calls on the Security Council and the United Nations to compel the Syrian regime to open all detention centers for inspection by the International Committee of the Red Cross and all United Nations committees.
The report additionally provides a number of other recommendations.

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The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has briefed the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on the case of the soldier, Ahmad Jamal Tawouz, born in 1993, who was a Syrian regime army recruit at the time of his arrest. Ahmad, originally from Aleppo city, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on Monday, May 25, 2015, while attempting to defect from the Syrian regime army near the Salah al Din neighborhood in Aleppo city, and taken to an undisclosed location. Since that date, he has been forcibly disappeared. His fate remains unknown to the SNHR, as well as to his family.

The SNHR has also briefed the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, as well as briefing the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, specifically in regard to Ahmad’s case.

The Syrian authorities have denied any connection with the enforced disappearance of the army recruit, Ahmad Jamal Tawouz. The SNHR has been unable to determine his fate, as have his family members, who fear that they may be arrested and tortured by regime personnel themselves if they continue to ask about his whereabouts and fate, as has happened in numerous previous cases.

The SNHR has called on the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearance, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, to intervene and to demand that the Syrian authorities release Ahmad immediately, as well as to secure the release of thousands of other forcibly disappeared citizens whose whereabouts and current conditions must also be revealed.

Although the Syrian government is not a party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, it is indisputably a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Arab Charter on Human Rights. Enforced disappearance constitutes a violation of both instruments.

SNHR also confirms that there are well-founded fears that many of those forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime since 2011 may have been subjected to torture and possibly killed in regime detention, with the number of citizens forcibly disappeared by the regime continuing to grow.

Paris – Statement by the Syrian Network for Human Rights:
 
On January 19, 2022, the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt, Germany, began the first session in the trial of the Syrian doctor, Alaa M., on charges amounting to crimes against humanity. The indictment contains 18 charges, including killing, torture, and causing physical and mental harm to detainees arrested by the Syrian regime on the grounds of their political opposition, with the crimes taking place in 2011 and 2012 in military hospitals in Homs and Damascus, in addition to the 261 Military Intelligence Prison in Homs. The German Public Prosecutor had announced the arrest of Alaa M., on June 22, 2020, in the German state of Hesse, on charges of committing crimes against humanity while working in the Homs Military Hospital before he moved to Germany. On December 16 of the same year, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Germany issued an expanded arrest warrant against Alaa.
 
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), represented by its director, Fadel Abdul Ghany, attended the first opening session of the trial. Through this participation, SNHR aims to support this trial, which we believe will contribute to revealing more details about the widespread practice of torture in state-military hospitals. We also displayed paintings drawn by SNHR staff of seven of the doctors forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, in order to underline the stark contrast between a doctor accused of torturing opposition demonstrators for their just, peaceful demands for a change in the dictatorial regime, and the heroic doctors who risked their own lives to provide medical treatment to demonstrators and provided relief services, and peacefully expressed their opinion on the need to move towards democracy. In response to their courageous and principled actions, however, the Syrian regime arrested and forcibly disappeared them, with one of these doctors being our colleague at SNHR, Dr. Omar Arnous, who has been forcibly disappeared since October 6, 2012.
 

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Press release (Link below to download full report):
 
Paris – The Syrian Network for Human Rights issued a report stating that there are at least 131,469 detainees or forcibly disappeared persons have been held by the Syrian regime since March 2011, and added that the Russian special envoy to Syria’s statement aims to misrepresent the issue of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons, along with his ally, the Syrian regime.
The 6-page report said; Russia’s Special Envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, statement on the sidelines of the 17th round of the Astana Talks, that: “The number of detainees in Syria, which is allegedly 980,000, is unrealistic compared to the number of prisons in Syria” is meant to cast doubt on the credibility of the documented information on those detained and forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, continuing Russia’s customary role of devil’s advocate as it persists in defending the Syrian regime and justifying or denying its crimes. In this context the report added that the Russian envoy would be aware that he and everyone else can rely fully on the statistics issued by the United Nations and human rights organizations which have created databases built on a strict methodology of documentation for over 11 years.
 
The report stated, the documentation process for arrest cases is complicated and tiresome because of the Syrian Regime barbaric practices. The report added that these arrests, that are, in reality, more like abductions as they are carried out without judicial warrants. In most cases, the security forces carrying out the arrests are from the four main intelligence branches, which are responsible for arrests with no oversight from any judicial authorities. These bodies automatically deny their responsibility for carrying out these arrests, regardless of the evidence against them, and most detainees go on to be categorized as forcibly disappeared.
It would be more helpful of the Russian envoy to demand that the Syrian regime and its Ministry of Interior publish lists of the names of the Syrian citizens they have detained, since the Syrian regime and its institutions currently issue no statistics or lists detailing these cases.
 
According to the report, since 2011, SNHR has built a detailed database documenting arrests and enforced disappearances using a dedicated program designed especially by our IT Department, which our staff work constantly to update and develop. Also, SNHR’s team is committed to high and precise standards to determine the arbitrary arrest case, based on the international law and the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment.
 
The report added that according to SNHR’s database at least 149,862 of the individuals, detained or forcibly disappeared at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria between March 2011 and August 2021 are still detained or forcibly disappeared, including 4,931 children and 9,271 women. Including:
 
131,469 individuals, including 3,621 children and 8,037 women (adult female) by the Syrian regime, about 87%. While 2287 including 37 children and women (adult female) are still under arrest/forcibly disappeared by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham. And 3641 individuals including 296 children and 759 women (adult female) by all armed opposition factions/Syrian national army. In addition, 3817 individuals including 658 children and 176 women are still under arrest/forcibly disappeared by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic forces. Also, 8648 individuals, including 319 children and 255 women arrested by ISIS, that are still forcibly disappeared.
 
According to the report, at least 102,287 individuals, including 2,405 children and 5,801 women, have been forcibly disappeared, including 86792, including 1738 children and 4986 women, while 8648 have been disappeared by ISIS including 319 children and 255 women. The report also stated, that 2064 including 13 children and 28 women, have been disappeared by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham. And 2567 individuals, including 237 children and 446 women arts still forcibly disappeared by all armed opposition factions/Syrian national army since 2011 in all areas it had controlled. Also, 2216 individuals, including 98 children and 86 women are still forcibly disappeared by the Syrian Democratic forces.
The report stated that the detainee figures included in the report don’t include prisoners with a criminal background, but do include cases of arrest that are based on the internal armed conflict, mainly due to opposition activity against the ruling authorities, as well as cases of detention intended to suppress freedom of opinion and expression.
 
According to the report, these statistics represents the bare minimum of the incidents of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance that have taken place, which the SNHR’s team have been able to document according to set criteria. In reality, there are thousands more cases and incidents which we were unable to include, due to difficulties and complications, we have faced since 2011 and up to the present day. Most notable among these are: The reluctance of victims’ families to cooperate and reveal or provide details of any information on their family members’ arrest, even confidentially, more especially if the arrested individual is female, due to a well-founded fear still prevalent in Syrian society that being discovered doing so would result in more torture and further danger for their loved ones and themselves; The failure of the international community and of all the organs of the United Nations to apply pressure on the Syrian regime authorities to release even one individual (including those whose sentences are completed); None of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces makes any public record available to the community showing the whereabouts of detainees and the reasons for their arrest, or what judicial rulings were issued against them, including the death penalty, with the vast majority of families left not knowing the fate of their family members.
 
The issue of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons is one of the most crucial human rights issues in Syria which there has been no progress in resolving despite its inclusion in several resolutions of the UN Security Council, as well as in UN General Assembly resolutions, in Kofi Annan’s plan, and finally in the statement of cessation of hostilities issued in February 2016, and in Security Council resolution 2254 of 2015 which states that all detainees, especially women and children, must be released immediately. Despite all these resolutions and other official statements, no progress has been made on the issue of securing the release of detainees in any of the rounds of negotiations sponsored by international parties regarding the conflict in Syria. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been unable to conduct any periodic visits to any of these detention centers, constituting a violation of International Humanitarian Law.
 
The report added, that the Syrian regime has not fulfilled any of its obligations under any of the international treaties and conventions which it has ratified. We refer specifically to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The regime has also violated several articles of the Syrian Constitution itself, with thousands of detainees arrested without any arrest warrant, imprisoned for many years, without charges, and prevented from appointing a lawyer and from receiving family visits. Almost 68 percent of all detentions documented have subsequently been categorized as cases of enforced disappearance.
The report recommended that the Russian regime must demand that its ally, the Syrian regime, disclose the fate of nearly 87,000 forcibly disappeared persons and immediately release tens of thousands of arbitrarily detained persons and detainees whose sentences ended, and stop the brutal torture practices.
 
As well as recommending that the United Nations, international community, and the guarantors of the Astana Talks should form an impartial special committee to monitor cases of enforced disappearance, and to make progress in revealing the fate of the nearly 102,000 documented missing persons in Syria, approximately 85 percent of whom are detained by the Syrian regime.
In addition to other recommendations.
 

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Press release (Link below to download full report):

Paris – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) issues its tenth annual report on Enforced Disappearance in Syria on the occasion of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances August 30, in which SNHR emphasizes that the disappeared persons in Syria and their families suffer a constant sense of grief and loss. The report reveals that the number of people detained since March 2011 who still remain forcibly disappeared as of August 2021 has now reached at least 102,287 individuals, the vast majority of whom were detained by the Syrian regime, which disappears people with the aim of destroying them and intimidating the entire population.

The 49-page report, which provides details on a large number of enforced disappearance incidents, as well as testimonies from victims’ families, reveals that the phenomenon of enforced disappearance in Syria is organically linked to the phenomenon of arbitrary arrest, with most of those subjected to arbitrary detention going on to be classified as forcibly disappeared. The report adds that the Syrian regime has targeted participants in political demonstrations against its rule with widespread arbitrary arrests since the early days of the popular uprising in March 2011, and has systematically used enforced disappearance as one of its most notorious tools of repression and terrorism aimed at crushing and destroying political opponents simply for expressing their opinion; the regime has also harnessed the capabilities of the security services and its tens of thousands of personnel to this end.

The report explains that the first years of the mass uprising saw the highest percentage of enforced disappearances because the demonstrations were taking place intensively, and within areas under the control of the Syrian regime, with the massive scale of the arrests and disappearances making the Syrian regime the worst globally in the twenty-first century in terms of forcibly disappearing its citizens, as the report notes.

The report adds that in the areas where the Syrian regime regained control after they had managed to escape from its control, hundreds of cases of enforced disappearance have been documented against the people of those areas, all of which confirm the Syrian regime’s continuing endeavors to persecute and punish even the most peripheral participants in the popular uprising against it. This also proves, as we have repeated dozens of times, that it is impossible for Syria to reach a state of stability with even minimal respect for the most basic rights of the Syrian citizen so long as the brutal security services that slavishly follow the orders of the Syrian regime survive; this means that the idea of any credible political solution being achieved while these security services continue to wield power without being held accountable for their terrible crimes is simply absurd.

As the report reveals, all parties to the conflict and the controlling forces have practiced widespread arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances of Syrian citizens in connection with the armed conflict, within the areas under their control, with the aim of intimidating political opponents and subjugating society in their areas of control. As the report further explains, the repercussions of the crime of enforced disappearance are not limited to the victims only, but also extend to their families, who suffer from loss, stress, years of waiting, and absolute helplessness, in the absence of any legal procedures they can take to assist their loved ones.

Fadel Abdul Ghany, Director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, says:
“The Syrian regime has harnessed enormous economic and human capabilities to arrest and disappear this huge number of Syrian citizens in order to crush and exterminate them politically, at a time when the Syrian people and state are suffering from extreme poverty that affects 85% of the total population, with the Syrian regime still continuing to persecute anyone who dares to criticize it. This confirms the absurdity of any political solution in the presence of the security services that have not changed their brutal policy at all, bolstered by the success of the Syrian regime with Russian/Iranian support in achieving impunity, and the international community’s failure to hold any Syrian official accountable, despite the enforced disappearances practiced by the Syrian regime amounting to crimes against humanity.”

The report outlines the record of victims of enforced disappearance since the beginning of the popular uprising for democracy in March 2011 up to August 2021, focusing mainly on the violations documented by the SNHR team between August 30, 2020, and August 30, 2021. The report also details the Syrian regime’s continuing manipulation of laws through registering some of the disappeared persons as dead through its Civil Registry Departments. In addition, the report also provides the names of the most prominent leaders of the Syrian regime’s security services involved in the crime of enforced disappearance of tens of thousands of Syrian citizens.

The report relies mainly on the data from the SNHR’s database, which the SNHR has been working on and building continuously for ten years to date, as well as on the interviews we conducted with families of victims who were forcibly disappeared from different Syrian governorates. The report provides 18 accounts, which were obtained directly rather than from open sources.

The report reveals the regular periodic correspondence conducted by the SNHR team with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, as well as with the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

From March 2011 to August 2021, as the report notes, at least 149,862 individuals, including 4,931 children and 9,271 women, are still arrested/ detained or forcibly disappeared at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria. Of these, 131,469 individuals, including 3,621 children and 8,037 women, are still detained or forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, while a further 8,648 individuals, including 319 children and 225 women, are still disappeared by ISIS, and 2,287 additional individuals, including 37 children and 44 women, are still detained or forcibly disappeared by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham.
In addition to these, the report further reveals that another 3,641 individuals, including 296 children and 759 women, are documented as being still detained or forcibly disappeared by the Armed Opposition/ Syrian National Army, while 3,817 individuals, including 658 children and 176 women, are still detained or forcibly disappeared at the hands of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

As the report reveals, at least 102,287 individuals, including 2,405 children and 5,801 women, are still forcibly disappeared between March 2011 and August 2021 at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria, with 86,792 of this total disappeared by Syrian regime forces, including 1,738 children and 4,986 women, and an additional 8,648 individuals, including 319 children and 225 women, disappeared by ISIS. Meanwhile HTS was responsible for disappearing 2,064 individuals, including 13 children and 28 women.

The report also notes that 2,567 individuals, including 237 children and 446 women, are still forcibly disappeared by the various Armed Opposition factions/ Syrian National Army since 2011 to date, in all the areas it controlled or controls, while 2,216 individuals, including 98 children and 86 women, are still forcibly disappeared by Syrian Democratic Forces.

The report provides an accumulative linear graph showing the record of enforced disappearances since March 2011, as well as providing a table showing the distribution of this record by year, showing that the first four years of the popular uprising for democracy saw the largest waves of enforced disappearances, with the annual record showing that 2012 was the worst year to date in terms of the number of people forcibly disappeared, followed by 2013, 2011, then 2014.
The report also outlines the distribution of the record of the forcibly disappeared by the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria according to the Syrian governorates where the victims were arrested; that is, according to the place where the arrest took place, rather than the governorate which the detainee comes from, with Damascus Suburbs governorate seeing the highest record of victims of enforced disappearance, followed by Aleppo, Damascus, then Deir Ez-Zour.

The report notes that since early 2018, the Syrian regime has continued registering many of the detainees previously forcibly disappeared in its detention centers as dead in the records maintained by the state Civil Registry departments, with the number of cases documented, as the report reveals, reaching at least 1,002 cases of forcibly disappeared persons, including nine children and two women, in which the Syrian regime revealed the fate of the disappeared through registering their deaths at Civil Registry offices, all of whom had died in detention, since the beginning of 2018 until August 2021. The regime failed to disclose the cause of death, with the families not being given their loved ones’ bodies or being informed of the place of their burial. The report adds that the Syrian regime have harnessed several levels of the Syrian state institutions to implement this procedure in violation of Syrian law and to manipulate the data on the forcibly disappeared recorded at the Civil Registry, with this blatantly illegal manipulation starting with the ministries of Interior and Justice, and extending to Civil Registry officials in all Syrian governorates.

The report adds that under international humanitarian law, commanders and other senior officials are held responsible for war crimes committed by their subordinates, noting that enforced disappearance has been practiced according to a general methodology, with a decision taken to employ this as a policy according to the chain of command that starts from the President of the Republic and is directly linked to him by the Ministries of Defense and Interior, the National Security Office, and the associated security services; the report provided the names of the most prominent leaders of the Syrian regime involved in the crime of enforced disappearance, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights database of data of perpetrators of violations.

The report notes that the Syrian regime has demonstrated a lack of commitment to the international agreements and treaties it has ratified, in particular the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights. In addition, the Syrian regime has violated a number of articles of the Syrian constitution itself as hundreds of thousands of detainees have been detained for many years with no arrest warrants being issued or any charges brought against them. The Syrian regime has also denied those detainees the right to an attorney and barred their families from visiting them. Approximately 69% of all detainees have become enforced disappearance cases as the Syrian regime has never informed their families of their whereabouts. Any attempt by detainees’ family members to inquire about the whereabouts of their loved ones may put the families themselves at risk of being arrested.

The report further notes that enforced disappearances have been carried out in the context of a widespread attack against all civilian population groups. The Syrian regime was the first party to perpetrate the violation of enforced disappearances, and is by far the most prolific perpetrator of this crime, with other parties left far behind in terms of the number of enforced disappearances, which constitute a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It is also considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute itself due to its being practiced as part of a systematic and public policy in the effort to crush the popular uprising for democracy, overwhelmingly by the Syrian regime.

The report adds that the other parties involved in Syria have also practiced the crime of enforced disappearance, although without the centralized and systematic nature of the Syrian regime, which differs from them in the vast quantity and distribution of cases, with the report noting that the ISIS group and Hay’at Tahrir al Sham are similar to the Syrian regime in the widespread and systematic nature of such cases.

The report recommends that the UN Security Council and the United Nations should hold emergency meeting to discuss this critical matter that threatens the fates of nearly 102,000 Syrian citizens and terrorizes the whole of Syrian society. The report also calls on them to work to reveal the fate of the forcibly disappeared persons in parallel with or prior to the start of the upcoming rounds of the political process, and to set a strict timetable to reveal their fate.
The report concludes with a recommendation that the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances should increase the manpower available to work on the issue of forcibly disappeared persons at the office of the Special Rapporteur on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in Syria in light of the massive level and extent of cases of enforced disappearance in the country, as well as providing a number of other recommendations.
View full Report