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Syria: Two Syrians Disappeared Since Abduction by Government Forces in the Hama Governorate in 2012

On 1 September 2015, Alkarama and Human Rights Guardians sent a communication to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the cases of Abdul Rahman Al Jawalak and Ramez Al Deeb, who disappeared since their respective abductions from the Hama countryside by governmental forces between January and August 2012.

On 22 January 2012, Abdul Rahman Al Jawalak, a 28-year-old farmer, was passing a checkpoint on the Maardes bridge, south of the town of Suran, north of the Hama Governorate, when he was arrested by agents of the Air Forces Intelligence from the Hama Branch, some in civilian clothes and others in military uniforms. After his disappearance, his family learned through informal sources that he had been transferred to the Air Forces Intelligence Headquarters in Damascus.

His family believes that he was arrested because he helped a soldier from the Hama unit of the army to defect, helping him to escape by driving him away with his car. Fearing reprisals, his family did not take any official action.

On 15 August 2012, Ramez Al Deeb, a 41-year-old citizen from the village of Zor al-Haysa, south of Al-Lataminah in the Hama countryside, was arrested in his village along with his father who was later released during a wave of arrests carried out by the Shabiha – a pro-governmental militia – and the Syrian army. Despite their numerous attempts at finding out where he has been taken to, his relatives have not heard from him since.

Left with no other resort at the national level, Abdul Rahman Al Jawalak and Ramez Al Deeb's families contacted Human Rights Guardians and Alkarama in the hope they could help shed light on their relatives' respective fates and whereabouts. In view of the facts, the above-mentioned organisations seized the WGEID asking this UN special procedure on human rights to call upon the Syrian authorities to release them immediately or, at the very least, to put them under the protection of the law by disclosing their whereabouts and allowing their family to visit them without restriction.

"The Syrian authorities have a legal obligation under international law to put an end to the systematic practice of enforced disappearance and to open investigations into all reported cases of disappearances in the country as well as to prosecute the perpetrators of such heinous crimes," recalls Inès Osman, Legal Officer for the Mashreq at Alkarama, adding that "survivors and their families are entitled to receive reparations and redress for their suffering."

For more information or an interview, please contact the media team at media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1008).