Victims of enforced disappearance in Syria have no trace

Introduction and methodology

The phenomenon of the enforced disappearance has existed in Syria for decades before but with the onset of the war in 2011 it has increased in frequency due to the multiple parties to the conflict. All of the parties have adopted the strategy of enforced disappearance as a tool to get their opponents, intimidate the activities, and extinguish the flame of the civil and political movement. They also used it to achieve other goals like bargaining the fate of the prisoners, to conduct mercenarism, to obtain ransoms, and to intimidate the people.   

UN estimates 150,000 people have been disappeared by the parties to the conflict in Syria. All of them are subjected to all types of torture, starvation, withholding medical care and even physical and sexual violence and torturing to death, without taking into account the international humanitarian laws or penal sanctions due to the ease of impunity, security chaos, and the partition of influence in Syria by rival players each one has no independent judicial systems and is affiliated with external parties.   

According to the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, proclaimed by the General Assembly in its resolution 47/133 of Dec. 18, 1992 as a body of principles for all states, an enforced disappearance occurs when:

“persons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches or levels of Government, or by organized groups or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support, direct or indirect, consent or acquiescence of the Government, followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the protection of the law.”

Monitoring and Documentation Department of North Press met 24 persons, 19 of them were relatives of victims of enforced disappearance, both online and in-person, between May and August of 2023. It also met a number of human rights activists and experts in international law in Syria. 

The names mentioned in the report are fake to protect them from any possible retaliation due to the security chaos.

Went away and never returned

“Since 2011, I have been looking for my husband who went out to the groceries and no longer returned,” said Ruba Ahmad, 50, who lost her husband 13 years ago in Salihiya neighborhood of Aleppo.  

“My husband was a tailor and he has not ever participated in politics. After he went missing, we looked for him everywhere but the only information we obtained about him is that someone saw a group of the Syrian government forces arrested him and took him. Since then, we have been living in the hope that he will come back one day,” Ruba told North Press.  

Ruba and the co-wife were displaced from Aleppo Governorate in northwest Syria to Hasakah Governorate in the northeast. They are now living in an IDP camp with their eleven children hoping to hear about their husband whether he is dead or alive.  

Similarly, Omar Salem, from the city of Sere Kanyia (Ras al-Ain) in the north of Hasakah, lost his father in 2016, who was arrested by a military group while he was going to buy cigarettes from a close grocery there.    

“We have no idea whether he is still alive or not. He has chronic diseases including diabetes and he suffered from stroke three times. Add to this, he cannot see by one of his eyes,” Salem said.

He added that “the only person who witnessed my father’s arrest was the grocery owner who told us that he could not identify the militants or the faction they affiliate to. I searched all prisons in the Autonomous Administration held areas, the Turkish-backed armed factions, and the Syrian government areas but I could not get any information confirming my father’s whereabouts.”

Salem also indicated that he had met several people who had lost a family member in a similar way and they yet to get any information about their fate.  

Families of the disappeared preys to blackmailing  

The practice of enforced disappearance in Syria has always been associated with blackmailing, as some military personnel and lawyers exploit the lack of resources of the families of the disappeared to obtain large sums of money and deceive them that they will reunite them with their missing relatives. Many women have been subjected to extortion and harassment while searching for their husbands.

Othman Hussein, a 70-year-old man from the countryside of Qamishli, lost his son in the city of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib in 2012. He said, “My son, who was serving in the compulsory service of the government forces, was arrested by them on charges of carrying out an explosion at a military post. This is what one of the young men who was with him told us, while others told us that he was killed in a clash between opposition factions and government forces. I had contacted him an hour before he disappeared and he was coming to us.”

Four years later, a lawyer came to them and asked them for 700,000 SYP (about $1,400 at the time) at that time, claiming that he knew where their son was and would take care of his case. The lawyer continued to collect money from the family and promised them false promises until he disappeared and nothing was known about him.

Othman’s family is still waiting for their youngest son, even after the last decree of “general amnesty” that was issued by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, they went to Damascus and awaited with thousands of families hoping to know something about their son or meet him.

The situation is no difference for Hadeel Khaled, a 20-year-old woman whose husband was arrested by opposition factions in 2019 in Sere Kaniye. Later, a person came to her and told her that her husband was alive, and that he was detained with him in one of the factions’ prisons two years ago, but he does not know where he is because they are transferred from one area to another every now and then.

“Several times people contacted us and asked for money to release him, but we did not dare to pay because we were afraid that they would kill him after taking the money,” she said.

Her husband was arrested after two years of marriage. He is the father of a girl, and his family lives in a state of instability and they hope to meet him.

Most of the detainees who are in the prisons of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, formerly al-Nusra Front) in Idlib whose percentage exceeds 70, are among the disappeared, as they are hidden without giving any information to the families.

“My son was arrested by the HTS in 2019 for working with one of the money transfer companies on charges of passing financial deals between government areas and areas of the HTS”, Riyadh al-Omran, a 60-year-old man from the city of Hama who was displaced to Idlib in 2015, said.

“After two months, my son was released by a verdict of innocence from the court, but he was arrested again with one of his friends at the end of the same year, 2019, by HTS militants, but his friend was released while we have not known anything about my son for three years”, he continued his speech.

Every time the father asked about his son’s fate, he was met with expulsion, insults and threats, until he became afraid of asking about his son and whether he was alive or killed.

“We received news by some security militants of the HTS later that Khaled had been executed by shooting on charges of working as an agent for the government, but I still hope that the news are not true and that I will meet my son”, he added.

ISIS is the second most responsible party for disappearing people in Syria after 2011. During its control over large parts of the country, it arrested thousands of people from different nationalities and religions in addition to activists, artists, workers in civil and military institutions affiliated with other parties of the conflict.

“ISIS arrested my son and four of my brothers’ sons in 2014 while they were on their way to go to Kurdistan Region of Iraq in search for work, and they were transferred from Tel Abyad to Raqqa, so no information was confirmed about them after days of searching and nothing about them are known whether they are still alive or not,” Mahmoud Khalil, a 70-year-old man from Kobani, said.  

“I went to Raqqa as soon as I heard about their arrest. I spoke with one of the leaders of the group and asked about our sons’ names. He said ‘they are here’ and ‘wait for me’. He came out and returned after about an hour and said ‘they aren’t here’ and he expelled me,” the man added.

Since then, the father has not heard any information about his son or his four nephews, but their families have not lost hope and are waiting for their return until now.

Enforced disappearance in Syria 

All parties to the conflict in Syria have perpetrated the enforced disappearance as a tool to crack down on peaceful activists and human rights defenders. The Monitoring and Documentation Department recorded that 3,079 persons have been arrested since the beginning of 2023, 71 percent of them are facing enforced disappearance as their families do not know anything about their whereabouts or the charges they face.

In 2023, the HTS arrested 1,177 persons including 112 women, the SNA arrested 797 persons including seven women, and the Syrian government arrested 677 persons including 17 women. It is worth mentioning that the real numbers may be more outrageous.  

An activist in the HTS Complaint Bureau in Idlib Governorate stated that they received more than 250 complaint letters from the families of those arrested and then disappeared by the HTS, while other families do not dare to ask about their children’s fate and to avoid arresting on trumped-up charges like espionage or so.

The situation is not too different for people who live in the government-held areas for fear of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance. Over the years, the families of the disappeared by ISIS have lost the hope to find them. The same thing is with those disappeared by the SNA that handed over large numbers of detainees to the Turkish authorities and illegally transferred them to the Turkish territory to face an unknown fate.    

Opinions and legal background

The crime of enforced disappearance is considered, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the crimes that violates individual human rights, including the right to recognition as human being according to the law, the right of personal freedom and security, the right not to be subjected to torture or any other form of cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment, the right of life, and cases of disappearance generally violate the right of family life, as well as various economic, social and cultural rights such as the right to live a decent standard of living and the right of education. In fact, it has been proven that the disappearance of the main economic family member, especially in less prosperous societies, often makes the family in a dire social and economic situation in which most of the rights contained in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights cannot be included.

Although Syria has not ratified the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which was drafted in 2006 and went into force in 2010, the enforced disappearance is part of international and customary law as well as part of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which Syria is a party that participate in, so that it means it must abide by the Convention and reveal the fate of the missing persons.

The customary international law, as one of the sources of international humanitarian law imposed during war by all parties of the conflict, requires compliance with the protection of families and ensuring their basic rights and reveal the fate of the missing persons and not detaining without judicial warrants. This is also stipulated in the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 47/133 dated in Dec. 1992 as a set of principles that must be applied by all states and which must be adhered to even by de facto ruling armed factions.  

“Enforced disappearance is a weapon of war used by parties of the conflict in Syria, especially the regime forces that have forcibly disappeared more than 100,000 people, although Syria is not a signatory party to the law of protecting all persons from enforced disappearance, this doesn’t mean failure to commit to it because disappearance is a crime against humanity. The perpetrators and those responsible for the crime must be held accountable and reveal the fate of the victims,” human rights activist and founder of Saydnaya Prison Detainees Association Diyab Serriya said.

The human rights activist said in his speech that the independent committee established recently to discuss affairs of missing persons is a good step but its results will be long-term and may take more than a decade to be able to give victims their rights and reveal the fate of those missing due to unstable political conditions in the country.

“The file of forcibly disappeared persons is one of the most important humanitarian files in Syria and it was good to establish a special institution for missing persons and this will be supportive of the file but not completely because its role will be limited to documentation and data collection. It will be difficult to provide help for determining the fate of those forcibly disappeared and their families”, lawyer Viyan Ayoub said.  

The lawyer pointed out that the Syrian government will not allow this mechanism to work inside the country because it had previously refused through its representative at the United Nations Bassam al-Sabbagh. Also, other parties of the conflict will not be helpful enough to reveal the fate of those detained forcibly in prisons. 

Recommendations

1. The international community should pressure parties of the conflict to reveal the fate of persons forcibly disappeared and their places of detention and release them with ensuring their compensation.
2. The Syrian government should ratify international conventions for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance and take all necessary measures to prevent its occurrence.
3. Civil society organizations, victims’ groups, and their representatives should enhance solidarity with the aim of strengthening regional forums to assist victims in advocating for their efforts, to seek justice and compensation. Solidarity can play an important role at the regional level to eliminate enforced disappearance in Syria.  
4. Parties of the conflict should stop enforced disappearance operations and allow people to communicate with their families as well as to appoint a lawyer to defend their rights.
5. The independent international institution concerned with missing persons established recently should help victims’ families and contribute to conducting transparent and fair investigations on the violations committed against them.