Nearly 100 people abducted or forcibly disappeared in Syria since January, says UN

Human rights office says it continues to receive 'worrying reports about dozens of abductions and enforced disappearances'

Syria's Sednaya Prison, where tens of thousands of people were detained and tortured by the Assad regime over the past decade. Getty images

Nearly 100 people have been recorded as abducted or disappeared in Syria since the start of the year, with reports of enforced disappearances continuing, the UN human rights office said on Friday.

“Eleven months since the fall of the former government in Syria, we continue to receive worrying reports about dozens of abductions and enforced disappearances,” Thameen Al Keetan, representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told reporters in Geneva.

The OHCHR has documented at least 97 people who have been abducted or disappeared since January, and said it was difficult to keep an accurate figure.

The latest number is in addition to more than 100,000 people who went missing under ousted president Bashar Al Assad, Mr Al Keetan said.

Former Syrian president Bashar Al Assad. Getty Images

Mr Al Assad was toppled last year in an 11-day rebel offensive that ended a 13-year civil war. The offensive was led by the now dissolved Hayat Tahrir Al Sham group, whose leader Ahmad Al Shara is now president.

Many Syrians want to see accountability for abuses suffered under the former regime, including in a brutal prison system. Although some families have been reunited with their loved ones since the fall of the Assad regime, many still do not know the fate of their relatives, the OHCHR said.

The volatile security situation in Syria, following outbreaks of violence in coastal areas and the southern province of Sweida, make it difficult to find and trace those missing as some people are scared to speak, Mr Al Keetan added.

The OHCHR had raised the case of Syria Civil Defence volunteer Hamza Al Amarin, who went missing on July 16 during violence in Sweida while supporting a humanitarian evacuation mission, and called for international law to be respected.

In May, the presidency announced that Syria would set up commissions for justice and missing persons, tasked with investigating crimes committed during the rule of the Assad family.

Two months later, another ministerial committee was set up following reports of Alawite women being kidnapped. In some cases, families had reported receiving demands for large ransoms.

Alawites have faced attacks and other reprisals since the fall of Mr Al Assad, who was a member of the minority sect.

But the ministerial committee concluded that all but one of the 42 cases of alleged abductions that it investigated were unfounded.