The Syrian Future Movement welcomes the important report issued on Sunday, January 25, 2026, by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which emphasizes the urgent need to protect crime scenes and preserve evidence in detention centers formerly under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria. The Movement calls on the Syrian government to take immediate and effective measures to ensure the preservation of this evidence and prevent its loss or tampering.
The Syrian Future Movement considers the transfer of control over these centers (in the governorates of Raqqa, Hasakah, and Deir ez-Zor, including al-Hol camp and other prisons) to the Syrian government a historic opportunity to achieve genuine transitional justice, uncover the truth, and end the culture of impunity that has prevailed for many years throughout the country. We recall the report’s documentation of grave and systematic violations, including arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, ill-treatment, and extrajudicial killings. The report documents the killing of 204 civilians (including children and women) and 819 cases of arbitrary arrest since December 2024, making the preservation of evidence a fundamental requirement for accountability and justice.
The Syrian Future Movement affirms that preserving evidence is a moral, legal, and national obligation that protects the rights of victims and survivors to truth, reparation, and accountability, and prevents the recurrence of violations in the future.
Any failure in this regard will be a betrayal of the spirit of the Syrian revolution, which was fundamentally launched against injustice, torture, and arbitrary arrest.
The Syrian Future Movement fully supports the recommendations contained in the report and urges the Syrian government to take the following measures:
- Secur all former detention centers fully and immediately by deploying security forces trained in human rights standards, enforcing strict entry and exit protocols, and preventing any transfer, destruction, or removal of evidence without official documentation.
- Treat these centers as potential crime scenes, maintaining the chain of evidence in accordance with international criminal standards, including documenting the site, documents, records, tools, and biological traces.
- Expedite the signing of formal cooperation agreements with the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM), the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria, and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), granting them immediate and secure access to collect and independently document evidence.
- Establish an independent national commission to investigate past violations in northeast Syria, comprising human rights experts, judges, and representatives of civil society organizations and survivors, to ensure transparency and impartiality.
- Launch a national program to document the testimonies of survivors and victims from all detention centers, guaranteeing their psychological and legal protection, and integrate this documentation with comprehensive transitional justice efforts.
- Establish transparent mechanisms to inform the families of the missing and detained about their fate, and create a unified national database of missing persons encompassing all regions and areas.
The Syrian Future Movement believes that the success of these efforts requires comprehensive national cooperation that transcends political differences and places human rights and justice above all other considerations. We also believe that the new Syria we envision cannot be built on the ruins of lost truth or on the impunity of criminals.
The Syrian Future Movement calls on all political and social forces and human rights organizations to exert joint pressure to ensure the implementation of these recommendations. It affirms its full readiness to contribute to any effort that serves to uncover the truth and achieve justice for all Syrians, regardless of their geographical or political affiliations.
