Attachments
I. Overview of Arbitrary Arrest and Enforced Disappearance in Syria
Since the very start of the popular uprising for democracy in March 2011, arbitrary detention has been one of the primary violations committed by the Syrian regime against civilians. Accordingly, as the demonstrations calling for political change expanded and spread across Syria, so too did the numbers of arbitrary detentions, whose rates have increased steadily as the Syrian conflict has continued. In most cases, these arrests have been carried out in a manner that more closely resembles an abduction than an arrest, with no judicial warrant being presented, while the targets of these arrests are selected based on security memorandums issued by the regime’s various security authorities.
As the database compiled by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) shows, about 73 percent of all arbitrary detentions carried out in Syria subsequently turn into enforced disappearances. The Syrian regime is responsible for about 88 percent of all arbitrary arrests documented on our regularly updated database. Naturally, given these staggering rates of arbitrary arrest, the number of Syrian citizens classified as missing has skyrocketed, so much so that it can be called a phenomenon in itself. Indeed, Syria is one of the worst countries worldwide in terms of the numbers of ‘disappeared’ citizens.
Along with arbitrary arrests come a myriad of other violations – the most notable of which are enforced disappearance, torture of many types, forms, and methods, and exceptional trials which involve summary and secret procedures.
The Syrian regime surpasses many of the world’s other authoritarian regimes by virtue of having absolute hegemony over the legislative and judicial branches of government. The regime has wielded this hegemony to pass a multitude of laws and decrees that violate international human rights law, as well as the principles of law and the parameters of arrests and interrogation established in domestic legislation and Syria’s current Constitution, most recently amended in 2012. The most notable of these violations are contained in Law No. 19 of 2012, known as the Counterterrorism Law, which is used as grounds to try most detainees (in addition to the Syrian Penal Code which is used as grounds to try detainees accused of crimes against state security and national security as specified in said code), and its subsequent amendment, Law No. 15 of 2022, Military Penal Code, and the Counter-Cybercrime Law. The Syrian regime has weaponized its arsenal of laws through the use of exceptional courts, such as the Counterterrorism Court, which was the subject of a previous SNHR report, in which we detailed its practices, methods, and rulings, in order to give an idea of the senseless brutality of this court, whose main purpose is to eliminate political opponents and detain civilians. Meanwhile, the Military Field Court is one of the worst exceptional criminal courts established in Syrian history, having been used by the regime as an instrument to disappear and kill activists and dissidents. Even though the court was disbanded in accordance with Legislative Decree No. 32 of 2023, its rulings remain in effect as of this writing. With the disbandment of the Military Field Court, all the cases previously handled by it were referred to the Military Judiciary, which is no less awful. The Military Judiciary is set to prosecute and handle those cases in accordance with the Procedural Law and Military Procedural Law established through Legislative Decree No. 61 of 1950 and its subsequent amendments.