Palestinian Ambassador to Damascus, Samir Al-Rifai, disclosed that 1,784 Palestinian detainees have gone missing in Bashar al-Assad’s prisons between 2000 and 2024, following the Syrian revolution’s overthrow of the regime at the end of last year.
In an interview with Anadolu Agency at the Palestinian embassy in Damascus, Al-Rifai discussed negative changes in the treatment of Palestinian refugees in Syria during the last two years of Assad’s rule.
Following the downfall of the Assad regime, the issue of prisons where detainees were held during the Syrian war (2011-2024) arose, with systematic torture reported, especially at the infamous Sednaya prison in Damascus, which is operated by the Ministry of Defense.
Al-Rifai said that the disappearance of 1,784 Palestinians in Assad’s prisons has been documented, and their whereabouts remain unknown to this day, suggesting that more individuals may be missing, with the number potentially increasing.
During the interview, Al-Rifai presented a paper file listing the names, arrest dates, and locations of the detainees. Some of the names on the list include Majid Mohammad Shomar, arrested in 2013 from the Al-Musharraf area in Damascus, and Wasim Mahmoud Badran, imprisoned in 2014 from Daraa in southern Syria.
Al-Rifai also mentioned two doctors, Alaa al-Din Yusuf and Hael Hamid, who were personally known to him and were arrested in Damascus between 2013 and 2014.
In 2013, approximately 500 cases of disappearances were documented in Assad’s prisons, with the numbers rising in subsequent years.
In response to questions about official procedures concerning enforced disappearances, Al-Rifai stated that the embassy had reached out to the Assad regime, but received no clear answers. Each official referred them to another, avoiding direct responses.
International reports indicate that thousands of detainees were systematically and secretly killed inside Sednaya prison, with executions carried out without trials at a rate of 50 per week between 2011 and 2015 alone.