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Syria: Shamel Najjar and his brother Tamer disappeared since their arrest during an army raid in 2012

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During an arrest raid that took place on 14 May 2012, Syrian army officers abducted 29-year-old Shamel Najjar and his brother, 31-year old carpenter Tamer, taking both to an unknown location and later refusing to recognise their arrest and detention. Concerned over their fates, Alkarama and Human Rights Guardians sent their case to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), in the hope that it will help shed light on their whereabouts.

Shamel and his brother were arrested at their residence in Jisr al-Shughur, Idlib governorate in north-western Syria, after members of the Syrian army stormed into their house at night. The officers did not present an arrest warrant nor explain the reasons for the arrest, refusing to tell their relatives where they were taking them. The family never received any official information on the brothers’ fates and whereabouts; however, former detainees informed the brothers’ relatives that they were first taken to the National Hospital in Idlib, which is used as a detention facility, and later transferred to Intelligence Branch 271 in Idlib, before being taken to the Military Intelligence Branch 215 in Damascus – the “Raid Brigade” – in 2014.

“The latest report of the Syria Commission of Inquiry (CoI) ‘Out of sight, out of mind: Deaths in detention in the Syrian Arab Republic’ sheds light on the fate of thousands of detainees who have been suffering from unimaginable abuses after their arrest by State forces and anti-government armed groups” says Inès Osman, Legal Coordinator at Alkarama. “As highlighted by the Commission’s Chair, Paulo Pinheiro, the spectre of arrest or abduction has paralysed communities across the country, leaving entire families too frightened to even search for their missing relative.”

Fearing that they would suffer the same fate, Shamel and Tamer’s family did not submit complaints on the brothers’ disappearances to any judicial authority. But Alkarama and Human Rights Guardians called upon the WGEID to request the Syrian authorities to disclose their whereabouts and to put them under the protection of the law.

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