Syria: Medication Distributor Disappears After his Arrest in July 2012

On 12 November 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 34-year-old medication distributor Mansour Mansour, who disappeared after arrest by members of the Syrian Army and Syrian Security Services in July 2012.

On 28 July 2012, Mansour was distributing medicinal products in Damascus when he was arrested by members of the Syrian Army and Syrian Security Services dressed in military uniforms and civilian clothes and taken to an unknown location. Eight months after his disappearance, Mansour's family was able to contact Nada Mahfouz, who used to lend her car to Mansour when he made deliveries. Nada told the family that she had been detained with Mansour at Branch 215 until her release, but she had no further news of his whereabouts.

After Mansour's arrest, his family appointed a lawyer to try to locate him and inquired about his whereabouts at the National Security, but to no avail. Left with no other resort at the national level, Mansour's family contacted Alkarama and Human Rights Guardians, in the hope that these organisations could help shed light on his fate. The human rights organisations then seized the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), calling upon it to ask the Syrian authorities to immediately release Mansour or, at the very least, to put him under the protection of the law by disclosing his whereabouts and allowing his family to visit him without restriction.

Concerned over the widespread practice of enforced disappearance in Syria, documented by Alkarama in several cases, the organisation calls on the Syrian authorities to:

  • Put an end to the systematic violation of human rights, especially enforced disappearances;
  • Prosecute the perpetrators of such 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)