On 22 October 2015, Alkarama and Human Rights Guardians sent a communication to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the case of Abdo Hayani, a 32-year-old carpenter who disappeared after his arrest by State Security forces at a checkpoint in the northwestern city of Sarmin in the Idlib Governorate.
On 14 July 2012, as he was returning to his house from Lebanon by taxi, Abdo was stopped at a checkpoint in Sarmin, where State Security forces in military uniforms and civilian clothes arrested him and took him to an unknown location. Informed of Abdo's arrest by the taxi driver and other passengers in the vehicle, his family inquired about his whereabouts in several detention centres in Idlib, but could not locate him.
25 days after his arrest, Abdo's mother reached out to the governor of Idlib, who contacted the State Security forces and was able to inform her that her son was detained at the State Security Branch in Idlib, where she was allowed to visit him. Showing clear signs of torture, Abdo told his mother that he had been forced to sign confessions without being allowed to read them. Since then, his mother was only authorised one more visit 10 days later.
Seven months after his arrest, Abdo's brother was also arrested and detained at the State Security Branch in Idlib for three months, during which he affirms having heard Abdo's name being called out by the prison administration. While he believes his brother is still detained there, his family inquired about Abdo's whereabouts in several other places, including the police station of Qaboun and the Anti-Terrorism court, but to no avail. To this day, all authorities contacted still deny being in possession of any information on Abdo's case.
Left with no other resort at the national level, Abdo's family contacted Alkarama and Human Rights Guardians, in the hope that these organisations could help shed light on his fate and whereabouts. The human rights organisations in turn seized the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), calling upon it to ask the Syrian authorities to release him immediately or, at very least, to put him under the protection of the law by disclosing his whereabouts and allowing his family to visit him without restriction.
"Most victims of enforced disappearances in Syria are arrested at military checkpoints or during operations of mass arrests carried out by the army," explains Inès Osman, Legal Officer for the Mashreq at Alkarama. "These arrests are conducted without any judicial warrant, and without the regime ever providing information to their families on the fates of their relatives, who also become the victims of the regime's strategy of terror."
Concerned over the widespread use of enforced disappearances and the systematic practice of torture in Syrian prisons, Alkarama calls on the Syrian authorities to:
- Put an end to the systematic violation of human rights, especially enforced disappearances and torture;
- Prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes; and
- Open investigations into all reported cases of disappearances.
For more information or an interview, please contact the media team at media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1008).