Syria remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for professional and citizen journalists, media technicians, Internet activists, and those who defend freedom of expression. In 2012, the Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Syria as the most dangerous country for journalists to do their job. In 2013, Syria ranked 176 out of 179 countries in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. The low ranking reflects the 143 journalists and Internet activists killed in Syria in 2012, when Reporters Without Borders identified the country as the world’s deadliest for journalists. Reporters Without Borders estimates that since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, the government has imprisoned at least 150 professional and citizen journalists. The government has also targeted others who have expressed opposition or promoted freedom of expression. 

The Syrian government had also forcibly disappeared, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and ill-treated medics and lawyers providing assistance to the wounded and detained, and subjected them to unfair trials. Lawyers working on behalf of political detainees in Syria have regularly informed Human Rights Watch when the government has detained physicians, nurses, and other first responders because of their work, including helping wounded protesters. Lawyers themselves have also been targeted for defending the rights of political detainees and working to document abuses.

Yehia and Mohamed Shorbaji - Peaceful Political Activists

Yehia Shorbaji is known in his hometown of Daraya as “the man with the roses,” because, friends and family said, he came up with the idea of giving flowers to the members of the security forces during the early days of the uprising. Soon Yehia, 34, also offered soldiers bottles of water on hot days.

More than a decade ago, Yehia joined Daraya Youth to study principles of nonviolence and take on projects like street cleanups and antismoking and anticorruption campaigns. As the uprising began in March 2011, Daraya Youth members peacefully protested government tactics. On September 6, 2011, people whom a witness believed to be Air Force Intelligence agents arrested Yehia and his 43-year-old brother Mohamed, a fellow construction worker and member of Daraya Youth, in a safe house they had used for meetings. Security forces also detained three other members of Daraya Youth that day, including a prominent protest leader, Ghiyath Mattar, who was killed in custody and whose body security forces returned to his family four days later.

Mohamed Shorbaji - Peaceful Political Activist

“My husband, Mohamed, is a peaceful activist, always against violence, not for a moment promoting the use of force,” said his wife, Amani. “We have four children, our youngest was 10 months old when the security forces arrested Mohamed. How do you build a father’s image to a baby that has no memory of him? ”

Security agents have held the men incommunicado in unconfirmed locations since their arrest, and their whereabouts and legal status remain unclear. A former inmate at Sednaya  Prison  told a relative of Mohamed’s and Yehia’s that he had seen the brothers there in 2013, although prison authorities refused to confirm they were there.  Another  relative told Human Rights Watch that in March, the family applied at the Military Police station in Qaboun to visit the Sednaya Prison, but officials denied the request.

“Knowing that your husband was arrested is bad, but not knowing where he is and not being able to see him is horrible,” Amani said.

 

 

 

Mazen Shorbaji - Peaceful Political Activist

Security agents have detained other family members, also part of Daraya Youth. On August 15, 2011, Air Force Intelligence officers stormed the house of Mazen Shorbaji, arrested him, and threatened to detain his wife as well, a witness said.

A real estate agent and bookstore owner, Mazen made banners calling for peace and advocating peaceful protests in the early months of the Syrian uprising. During confrontations with government forces, Mazen helped wounded protesters find a safe place to receive medical treatment. His relatives believe that security agents detained him as punishment for these peaceful opposition activities.

Working through personal connections, the family finally managed to locate Mazen in Sednaya  in July 2012, and visited him there twice, first during Ramadan in the summer  and then in September. A close relative who visited him said Mazen looked extremely tired and had lost weight.

During the second visit, Mazen told his family that he had appeared before a military field court on September 3 and had signed a document without knowing what it said. Mazen’s attorney was not allowed to attend the court proceeding.  A relative who spoke to Mazen about the proceeding said that no evidence was presented except statements from two detainees  that Mazen was an activist. Their wives later told the relative that the two other detainees had confessed under torture. No one informed Mazen of the charges against him. His family does not know what Mazen signed, or whether a judge has issued a ruling in his case.

A close relative said that Mazen’s family had submitted at least five requests to see him  to the Justice Ministry  and to the Military Police station in the Qaboun neighborhood of Damascus, which the relatives believed would have information about him. Officials rejected the requests without providing any justification.

“How can we explain to Mazen’s 4-year-old son why his father doesn’t come home in the evening?” Mazen’s relative said. “That child has no understanding of what it means for an activist to be detained, but he keeps asking for his father and wonders why he can’t see him.”

 

Nabil Shorbaji - Peaceful Political Activist
 

Security forces arrested another cousin, Nabil Shorbaji, also a Daraya Youth member, before he could fulfill his dream of marrying his fiancée, a family member said. As a journalist, Nabil wrote about the need to fight corruption and encourage free speech, and he invited people to share ideas through discussion.

A family member said that Nabil, 29, had been protesting the detention of activists in front of the Interior Ministry in Damascus when security officials arrested him for the first time on March 16, 2011. They released him 17 days later, but arrested him again on February 26, 2012, at an Air Force Intelligence checkpoint in the neighborhood of Al-Thawra in Daraya as he was driving to a friend’s house. Two of Nabil’s friends who were with him that day informed his family of his arrest.

Former detainees told Nabil’s family that they had seen him in the Air Force Intelligence detention facility in Mezze and that officials moved him on February 2013 to Adra. Members of Nabil’s family who were finally able to visit him once in Adra, where he remains, said that his legal status is unclear. Officials told Nabil that he would face trial before a military field court, but he has not yet seen a judge or been informed of the charges against him.

“We are all waiting for Nabil,” a family member said. “My old mother is sick, but says she is trying to hold herself together until she sees him. His fiancée is blessed with patience and gets her strength from the dream of being united with Nabil. Thank God we were able to visit him in Adra and see with our own eyes that he is still alive. We only have patience and hope to keep us going until we see him among us again.”

UPDATE: A family member told Human Rights Watch February 17 that Nabil was transferred to Sednaya prison after appearing before a judge at the Military Court in Qaboun in December. Security forces at Sednaya prison denied the family’s request in December to visit Nabil there. 

Security forces arrested 19-year-old Mohamed Nour al-Shemali on December 1, 2012, as he walked through the gates of Aleppo University, a friend told Human Rights Watch. Mohamed and a second friend were on their way to interview internally displaced Syrians who were taking shelter in the university dormitories. Through such interviews, Mohamed documented abuses by the Syrian government, and he regularly discussed his findings with international media. The security forces, including members of Military Intelligence, had deployed to the university after a wave of student protests in 2012, and they detained both of the young men.

At the time of his arrest, Mohamed was carrying his laptop and a camera in his bag. His friend worries that videos of his media interviews stored on his computer could have endangered Mohamed during interrogation. Mohamed’s family fears that under torture, he may have confessed to participating in protests, and that security forces could punish Mohamed and the family.

A relative of Mohamed’s told Human Rights Watch that the family found out about his arrest from other students who witnessed it. More than eight months after Mohamed’s arrest, his family still has no idea where security agents are holding him or why. Mohamed’s 49-year-old father is extremely worried about him: he looks for and visits others released from detention in the hope that they might know something about his son.

A detainee who was recently released told relatives that he had seen Mohamed in a detention facility run by Military Intelligence in Damascus, though someone else had previously told the relatives he had seen him in the Military Intelligence branch in Aleppo. “The person who saw him in Aleppo told us he had been tortured, and the one who saw him in Damascus told us he had lost a lot of weight,” a relative said. That is all the family knows.

Islam al-Dabbas had participated in peaceful protests in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus where in the early months of the uprising, people offered water and flowers to the army and security forces trying to end demonstrations. Now his brother Mohamed considers himself lucky, because Islam and their father, Khairo, are “just detained, not dead.”

“We wanted to send a message: these protests are peaceful,” said Mohamed. “My father and brother did nothing more than peacefully ask for justice and freedom.”

Khairo was arrested at a friend’s home in Daraya in early July 2011 by people a witness believed were Air Force Intelligence agents who were supervising arrests in the area. The agents told Khairo they would release him if he pledged not to participate in demonstrations, and if Islam, his 23-year-old son, surrendered to the authorities, conditions the father refused. After he spent three months of incommunicado detention in an Air Force Intelligence branch and three months in Sednaya Military Prison in Damascus, authorities transferred him to Adra Central Prison in Damascus, as he told his family members when they were finally able to visit.

During his trial before the Damascus-based Counterterrorism Court, the judge did not examine the evidence presented, no witnesses were called, and his lawyer was not allowed to present a defense. The court convicted him of “participating in and inciting protests” and sentenced him to 15 years in prison, which he started serving in the Adra prison in January 2013.

Islam, Khairo’s oldest son among five children, was an engineering student in his second year of college when security forces arrested him on July 22, 2011 shortly after his father was detained.  Before his arrest, Islam had organized peaceful protests as part of the Daraya Youth group, many of whose nonviolent activists have been detained. Numerous photos taken during protests show him handing out water bottles to members of the army and protesters alike. The family was able to visit him once in Sednaya, a year ago, but since then, the government has not given his family any information about his whereabouts or well-being and has denied relatives’ requests to visit.

“Our lives have completely changed since my father and brother got arrested,” Mohamed said. “We have been waiting for them for two years now. The house is so quiet and sad without them.  It feels like a cloud of sadness has engulfed my family, and we keep praying for their release.”

Campaign to free Islam al-Dabbas:
 

 

Work of partner organizations:

http://en.alkarama.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=893:syria-enforced-disappearance-and-risk-of-torture-of-eight-syrian-nationals-&catid=36:communiqu&Itemid=198

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/young-syrian-activists-held-amid-widespread- repression-2011-08-15

On the night of September 20, 2012, Syrian security forces stormed Mohamed Meqdad’s house in Damascus and searched every room, looking for medicine they believed he was distributing to protesters wounded by government fire, said a close relative present during the raid. The security agents found nothing, but arrested Mohamed anyway, the relative said, leaving his family so terrified that his parents did not even dare at first to approach the authorities to ask what had happened to their son.

Born in 1985, Mohamed is a lawyer who volunteered with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent during relief operations related to the war in neighboring Lebanon in 2006. When the Syrian uprising started in March 2011, he helped distribute food, blankets, and other necessities around Damascus. When he was not working with the Red Crescent, Mohamed collected money, food and blankets from his friends and family and traveled around the city helping people he had identified as needy.

The family heard from a source close to the government that Mohamed might now be in Adra Prison and that he had also spent time at Military Intelligence Branch 215. Although they got no official confirmation or sign of life from their son, these few words about his whereabouts gave them hope that he might still be alive.

Mohamed’s mother is desperate for any news of her son. She says she can still hear the ring of his laughter, which she described as hearty and generous. She can still hear the notes from his guitar. Mohamed’s siblings have set up a schedule so one of them is always by her side, so that she can never get bad news while she is alone. Every day, they retell old stories about their brother, and make family plans for when Mohamed is released.

On May 14, 2011, for unknown reasons, some of Anas al-Shoghary’s friends and one of his relatives betrayed him, reporting his activism to the security forces. Military Intelligence agents arrested the 24-year-old Anas in the city of al-Marah in Tartous governorate, along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. The relative later admitted his involvement in the arrest.

Since the arrest, the government has not given Anas’ family any information on his whereabouts, said Anas’ brother Ibrahim. “My parents asked them too many times.”

Anas, an economics student at Teshreen University in Latakia, had been organizing peaceful protests in his hometown, Baniyas, and he gave numerous interviews to the international media using his real name.

Former detainees have offered the family patchy information on his whereabouts: Anas was initially held at the Military Intelligence Branch in Tartous, one former detainee said; then he was seen at the Military Intelligence Palestine Branch in Damascus, another reported.

In 2012, a family friend recently released from detention told Anas’ parents that he had seen him in Sednaya.

On August 4, 2012, agents of the Political Security branch in Baniyas detained Anas’ 19-year-old brother, Salah, a high school student. The family assumes security agents arrested Salah to pressure Anas.

Security forces stopped Salah at a checkpoint and asked him to go to their branch for questioning, said Ibrahim. “He never came back.”

Former detainees have told the family they had seen Salah, but officials have never confirmed his whereabouts. One former detainee said he saw him in the Military Intelligence Branch in the city of Tartous. Another said he saw him at the Military Intelligence Palestine Branch in Damascus, and described him as being in disturbingly poor health. “They told us he had been severely tortured,” said Ibrahim.  “They told us he was to be transferred to the military hospital, but we have no way of reaching him or knowing where he is.”

The disappearance of the young brothers has shattered the al-Shoghary family, threatening the mother’s health. “She is in the hospital in the intensive care unit, and we don’t know how long her heart can keep beating,” Ibrahim said. “We feel we are losing a part of her every day that she spends in uncertainty about her sons’ fate. I fear that the absence of my brothers might kill my mother.”

Work of partner organizations: 

Mazen Darwish is the president of the Damascus-based Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), which he founded in 2004 to promote freedom of opinion and expression. In recent years, international organizations have showered awards on him for his advocacy: He received the 2011 Roland Berger Human Dignity Award; the 2012 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize; and the 2013 Bruno Kreisky Prize.

As crisis engulfed Syria in 2011, SCM and its staff worked to document serious and widespread human rights abuses with a view to contributing to a process leading to truth, justice, and reconciliation.

Plain-clothes Air Force Intelligence agents raided SCM’s office in Damascus on February 16, 2012 and arrested two visitors and all 14 staff members present. Officials released the visitors, and soon afterward, several staff members. The government tried seven staff members for “possession of illegal documents published with the aim of overthrowing the regime,” sentenced them to time served, and released them in mid-May 2012. Security agents then re-arrested one of this group, 26-year-old Ayham Ghazzoul, in November 2012. Shortly afterward,another detainee reported that he saw Ayham die from wounds that appeared to be from a beating in Military Intelligence Branch 215 in the Kafar Souseh section of Damascus.

 

The Air Force Intelligence held Mazen Darwish and four other staff members, Hussein Gharir, Hani Zaitani, Mansour Omari,and Abdul Rahman Hamada, incommunicado for several months. With total official silence on the fate of these men during that time, their families feared they had been killed. Instead, Air Force Intelligence agents tortured and mistreated them, others who were detained with them and then released told their families. Finally, officials moved them to Adra and allowed their families to visit.

On February 27, the five men were indicted for “publicizing terrorist acts” under article 8 of the Counterterrorism Law President Bashar al-Assad enacted in 2012.

The indictment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, states that the government brought these charges because of the men’s activities as staff members of the organization. The illegal activities included monitoring online news by the Syrian opposition, publishing studies on human rights and media in Syria, documenting names of the detained, disappeared, wanted, and killed during the Syrian conflict, and receiving funding from Western organizations. The indictment states that an investigative judge in Damascus considered these actions to be part of an attempt to “stir the internal situation in Syria and so provoke international organizations to condemn Syria in international forums.”

If convicted, the men face prison terms of up to 15 years. Officials conditionally released two of the five, Mansour and Abdul Rahman,on February 6, 2013 pending trial, while Mazen remains in detention, along with Hussein and Hani.

“Mazen and I got married five months before he was arrested,” said Yara, Mazen’s wife. “I still cannot process everything that has happened: his arrest, his detention, our dreams shattered.  How long will this nightmare last?” When officials finally allowed Yara to visit her husband in the Adra prison in Damascus in November 2012, she was alarmed to see how much weight he had lost. “I was so glad he was still alive. I had been haunted by the thought that the security forces might kill him in detention, while torturing him,” she said.

Hani and Sana, too, had married only five months before Hani’s detention. Agents of the security forces arrested Sana on the same day as her new husband, and officials did not tell her that they had also captured Hani. Officials released Sana two days later, when she learned the harsh news that her husband was missing. “His absence is excruciatingly painful,” she said.

When security agents detained Hussein, Mays, his wife of seven years, was left caring for their two sons, so young that now at ages 5 and 2 they barely remember their father when they visit him in detention. “When I took my child to see his father, he thought that was his uncle,” Mays said. “It was even harder on our older child, who had faint memories of his father but did not recognize him in prison.” After two visits, the older boy refused to go back to the prison. “He said he no longer wished to speak to his father through the window. He wanted to sit on his father’s lap, he wanted to take his father home, and he wanted his father to read books to him,” she said. “This is getting increasingly difficult for me, although I was soothed by the knowledge that he is alive.”

Other HRW work on this case: http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/17/syria-rights-activists-face-terrorism-charges; and http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/06/25/syria-counterterrorism-court-used-stifle-dissent.

Ali al-Shehabi is a Syrian writer of Palestinian parents who lived in Yarmouk Camp, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. A liberal thinker, he spent 10 years in prison after the security forces arrested him in 1982 on the false accusation of being a member of the Communist Party. Upon his release in 1992, Ali started publicly advocating secular democratic principles, and managed to obtain a permit from the Syrian authorities to establish a new political party, which he called “Syria For All.”  Despite his permit, in 2006, government forces arrested him for establishing the party and detained him for six months.

“Ali was a peaceful activist and a free thinker,” a relative told Human Rights Watch. “He resented the way that the Syrian uprising had turned into an armed conflict.” Before his arrest, the relative said, “Ali spent so much time and energy inside Yarmouk Camp advocating for dialogue and against the use of arms.”

After the uprising began, Ali lobbied field hospitals in Yarmouk Camp to admit the wounded without hindrance. He acted as a mediator between the pro-government Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose General Command was in Yarmouk, and Yarmouk-based members of the opposition Free Syrian Army. The Syrian security forces arrested Ali for the third time on December 19, 2012, before he was able to negotiate an agreement.

Ali’s family used government connections to locate him at the Military Intelligence Palestine Branch in Qazzaz, Damascus. “The security forces at the Palestine branch told us they would release him in two days, but we never saw him,” the relative said. “They later told us they had released him, but we still haven’t seen him. All we want now is to know whether he is still alive.”

Update: On April 21, a relative informed Human Rights Watch that the Syrian authorities responded on December 2013 to an inquiry by the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances acknowledging Ali al-Shehabi’s arrest and stating that “he was arrested on the base of suspicions about his activities, and he is still under investigation by the competent judicial authorities.” The family does not have any further information about his whereabouts. 

Work of partner organizations: 

On August 13, 2012 Syrian security forces arrested Dr. Hayel Hamid, 66, a dual Syrian-British national. Dr. Hamid is a surgeon who worked at the al-Assad Hospital and al-Mouwasat hospital in Damascus, taught at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Damascus, and had his own medical clinic in Yarmouk, in south Damascus. Witnesses said that security forces in military uniforms raided Dr. Hamid’s clinic, arrested him, and confiscated his laptop and mobile phone. A relative living outside Syria said that security forces then escorted Dr. Hamid to his home in Yarmouk to pick up his car.

The relative said that security forces had called Dr. Hamid a few days earlier and told him to come in for questioning. He did, and was released. The relative said that while Dr. Hamid was critical of the Syrian government, he was not politically active and did not participate in protests. “His political views were only an opinion,” the person said. “But we believe that he was detained because in social circles he spoke out about his political views.”

Since his arrest, and despite his family’s efforts to try and locate him at several security branches and the courts, Dr. Hamid’s fate and whereabouts remain unknown. However, the British Embassy in Jordan told the family that Dr. Hamid is in Syrian government custody.

“Dr. Hamid is a caring husband and a father of four,” his relative told Human Rights Watch. “He was the main provider for his family, and his arrest forced his wife and four children to face a dangerous security situation alone in Yarmouk.”