Marwan Hassan al-Hamad, a young resident of Mahjah in Daraa countryside, tragically succumbed to torture in Sednaya Military Prison nearly two years after his initial arrest.
The Ahrar Houran Gathering reported through its correspondent that the family of Hamad received the devastating news of his demise under torture at Sednaya military prison last Sunday.
The source revealed that Hamad had been a former member of the Free Army until the regime assumed control of the governorate in mid-2018 under a settlement agreement. He was subsequently apprehended by a group affiliated with the Military Security Branch in Mahjah, led by the so-called Qassem al-Hoshan
A close associate of Hamad disclosed that the family has not been issued a death certificate nor received the body of their son from the regime forces. The heart-wrenching news of his death reached them on Monday, as the victim’s brother attempted to visit him in detention.
It is a distressing pattern that the Assad regime frequently withholds the bodies of individuals who perish under torture in its prisons. Typically, the regime informs the victim’s family of the death, providing a death certificate displaying the date of demise and certain personal details, while remaining silent on the precise cause of death.
126 victims
The Violations Documentation Office of Ahrar Houran Gathering has meticulously documented 126 cases of individuals from the Daraa governorate who fell victim to torture in Syrian regime detention centers. This distressing trend has persisted since the regime assumed control of the governorate in July 2018, with the latest recorded incident dating back to October.
A recent report from the Syrian Network for Human Rights, released earlier this month, highlighted the regime’s alarming practice of not officially recording the hundreds of thousands of citizens it has killed since March 2011 in the death records of the civil registry. The regime, it seems, exerts brutal control over the issuance of death certificates, a practice that extends beyond those killed by the Syrian regime to victims of various parties and the families of the missing and forcibly disappeared.
The report underscored that access to death certificates was not granted to all families of the deceased, as the regime authorities selectively issued them based on specific criteria established by the Syrian regime and its security services. Consequently, a significant majority of families find themselves unable to obtain these crucial documents, primarily due to the understandable fear of associating their names with individuals who were detained by the Syrian regime and subsequently killed under torturous circumstances. This chilling revelation points to the broader issues surrounding transparency, accountability, and human rights violations within the Syrian context.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
