The SNHR has briefed the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on the case of the citizen Tareq al Rahwan, a truck driver from Deir Khabiya town west of Damascus Suburbs governorate, who was aged 30 at the time of his arrest. SNHR urged the UN body to demand that the Syrian authorities release him immediately. Mr. al Rahwan was arrested arbitrarily on May 3, 2015, while passing through a check point run by the Syrian Regime’s Military Security forces, namely the Town Center checkpoint on the Damascus-Daraa International Road, and was taken to an undisclosed location. He was last seen in early August 2015 by a former detainee in the Military Security branch, Branch 227 (the Region branch) in Kafrsousa neighborhood in Damascus city. He has not been seen since that date at any security branch or prison. His fate remains unknown to the SNHR as well as to his family.
The Syrian authorities have denied any connection with the disappearance of Tareq al Rahwan. The SNHR has been unable to determine his fate, as have his family members, who fear that they may be arrested and tortured by regime personnel themselves if they continue to ask about his whereabouts and fate, as has happened in numerous previous cases.
SNHR has called on the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearance to intervene and to demand that the Syrian authorities release Mr. al Rahwan immediately, as well as to expedite investigations into the fate of thousands of other forcibly disappeared citizens whose whereabouts and current conditions must also be revealed.