Paris – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has notified both the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and the Special Rapporteur on torture of the case of the college student, Omar Muhammad Ghannoum, born in 1992, from al Hamidiya village in the western suburbs of Homs governorate, who was arrested by Syrian Regime forces on May 1, 2013, in a raid on Tishreen University in Latakia city. On January 17, 2020, his family learned that he had been registered at the Civil Registry Department as having died on November 24, 2014. SNHR believes that he probably died due to torture in one of the regime’s detention centers.
As is the norm in all such cases, Syrian authorities have not confessed to killing Omar, while his family has been unable to submit any complaint about his death for fear of being persecuted by security forces.
SNHR stresses its grave concerns for the lives of civilians arrested since 2011, as the number of deaths in regime custody continues to rise.