Syrian Detainees: A Wound That Never Heals

The Syrian Revolution began in 2011 as spontaneous peaceful public protests.
The Syrian regime deliberately used arbitrary arrest and detention to instill fear and suppress opposition among civilians.
The arrests included political detentions linked to the popular movement, followed by the militarization of the revolution.

In the 2022 report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, at least 2,221 cases of arbitrary arrest and detention were documented, including 148 children and 457 women. In 2023, the same organization documented at least 223 arrests in Syria during August, including 57 civilians involved in anti-regime protests, among them 14 children and 17 women.
Out of these, 183 turned into cases of enforced disappearance, according to a report released on September 2, 2023.

There were 121 cases of arrest by the Syrian regime forces, 42 by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), 32 by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib, and 28 by factions of the Syrian National Army.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights also documented at least 1,467 arbitrary detentions since the beginning of the year until the end of August, with 1,219 turning into enforced disappearances, making August the second-highest month for detentions after May, which saw 226 arrests.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights raised the total of detainees and forcibly disappeared in Syria to 135,000 in a UN General Assembly resolution issued on November 15, 2023, documenting at least 221 cases of arbitrary arrest/detention, including 19 children and 14 women, in November 2023.

The 27-page report highlighted that most arrests in Syria occur without a judicial warrant, either at checkpoints or during raids, usually conducted by security forces of the five main intelligence agencies of the Syrian regime, independent of judicial authority. Detainees face torture from the moment of arrest and are denied communication with their families or lawyers.
The authorities deny these arbitrary arrests, resulting in most detainees becoming forcibly disappeared.

Political Efforts Exerted:

1. Syrian Opposition:
   The Syrian opposition’s efforts in 2023 on the detainee issue include:

• Repeatedly raising the issue in various international forums.
• Preparing documents condemning the Syrian regime.
• Monitoring recent arrests.
• Collaborating with international institutions on forcibly disappeared matters.
• Unifying efforts of detainees’ and missing persons’ families.
• Developing a concept for a new international institution.
• Seeking justice and accountability.

1. International Community:
   The international community’s efforts include:

• Documenting testimonies of former detainees in Syrian prisons.
• Working towards justice and accountability.
• Establishing an independent international mechanism to coordinate and support the release of detainees and search for the missing.
• Cooperating with all international parties to form an independent humanitarian mechanism to locate forcibly disappeared and detained individuals.
• Making significant progress on detainees and forcibly disappeared issues.

Result?
These efforts by the Syrian opposition and the international community have pressured the Syrian regime on the detainee issue, but this pressure has not yet yielded the release of detainees or ended the regime’s policy of extending its security agencies’ reach to quash any public movement, even in the form of dissent.

The Syrian regime has attempted to close the detainee issue through various means:

1. Releasing some detainees through prisoner exchanges with military opposition factions.
2. Releasing some detainees through bribes paid to regime officials to reveal their fate or secure their release.
3. Using anti-terrorism laws and decrees to classify many detainees under terrorism crimes, thus transferring them from intelligence detention centers to prisons for terrorism-related crimes.
4. Changing the legal classification from arbitrary detainees to prisoners of war.
5. Issuing death certificates for some detainees.

Through leaked images of detainee corpses, and corroborated insider information from the Syrian regime, it can be assumed that every Syrian detainee before 2018, who was not transferred from intelligence basements to a civilian prison under judicial control, or was not released, has been executed! They are likely in one of Caesar’s photos or other unrevealed photo collections.

Thus, the Syrian regime has concluded the detainees’ file according to its plan of whitewashing the prisons, convincing some international parties, including Arab regimes.

It’s worth noting that these measures do not constitute a final solution for the detainees’ file according to international human rights law.
A final solution requires the release of all political detainees, determining the fate of the forcibly disappeared, and ensuring justice for those disappeared.

Additionally, the issue of detainees and forcibly disappeared in areas controlled by the Syrian opposition and the Autonomous Administration lacks transparent monitoring mechanisms.

Conclusion and Recommendation:
For the sake of the detainees and their families, the darkness of prisons, and the pains of the tortured in Syria, and for both documented and yet undocumented cases, we in the Syrian Future Movement propose the following:

• All Syrian regions today lack state authority and law, implying no fair judiciary adhering to international human rights, which applies to both opposition areas and SDF regions, as well as regime-controlled areas. It’s crucial to note that the Assad regime’s crimes cannot be compared to others, as arrests in areas outside regime control are not state policy.
• De facto authorities in Syria lack the capacity and proper mechanisms to address the detainees’ file, ensuring human rights, judicial guarantees, or legal procedures.

Therefore, we recommend that the international community, through United Nations mechanisms, impose direct supervision on prisons across all de facto authorities under Chapter VII sanctions, to halt arbitrary detentions and lead to a political solution for building a new state based on the rule of law.

• We also recommend obtaining guarantees from relevant regional and international states involved in Syria, as the issue of detainees, both civilian and political, should not be influenced by international interests in Syria.
• Finally, we suggest establishing a non-political Syrian civil society institution in all conflict areas. Its members should not be politically affiliated but focus on being a support system for all former and future detainees. It should start by compiling names and building a database of detainees, the forcibly disappeared, and those executed, then appoint lawyers to defend them and demand their immediate release, aiming to empty all prisons across Syrian territory.

Ibrahim Mustafa
Researcher, Research and Studies Department
Political Office
Syrian Future Movement