Palestinian Ambassador to Syria Samir al-Rifai has revealed that 1,784 Palestinian detainees have disappeared in the prisons of Bashar al-Assad’s regime between 2000 and 2024.
Speaking to Anadolu at the Palestinian Embassy in Damascus, al-Rifai said the figures, which were documented, likely underrepresent the actual number, as additional cases may not have been reported.
Documenting the disappeared
Al-Rifai presented a paper file containing the names of the missing detainees, along with their dates of arrest and detention locations. Among the names were Majed Mohammed Shumer, arrested in 2013 from the Mashrou Dummar area of Damascus, and Waseem Mahmoud Badran, detained in 2014 in Daraa, southern Syria.
He also pointed to two Palestinian doctors he personally knew, Alaa al-Din Youssef and Hael Hamid, who were arrested in Damascus between 2013 and 2014.
In 2013 alone, approximately 500 cases of forced disappearance were documented in Assad’s prisons, with numbers rising in the following years, al-Rifai said.
Asked about official efforts to address these disappearances, he noted that the embassy repeatedly contacted Assad’s government but received no clear responses, as officials continuously deferred inquiries to others to evade accountability.
International reports indicate that thousands of detainees were secretly executed in the notorious Sednaya prison.
The deposed regime carried out extrajudicial executions at a rate of 50 per week between 2011 and 2015, according to these reports.
Assad’s government used all possible means to suppress the 2011 protests demanding a peaceful political transition, triggering a devastating civil war.
Since opposition forces toppled Assad's paranoid and brutal government one week ago, numerous ex-prisoners are shedding light on the depths of the despair visited upon Syria's people over the past decades.
Palestinian efforts
Al-Rifai, who was imprisoned in Assad’s jails for six years (1985-1991), said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sent multiple delegations to Damascus to discuss issues concerning Palestinian refugees, detainees, humanitarian aid, and healthcare.
“However, these delegations returned empty-handed, with no information on the missing detainees,” he said.
Following Assad’s downfall, the embassy reached out to freed Palestinian detainees, particularly those who had been held in Sednaya, to gather information about their missing peers, but nothing was uncovered, he added.
Al-Rifai noted that the disappeared include not only Palestinian refugees in Syria but also individuals from the occupied West Bank. He explained that Syria was once considered “a safe haven for Palestinian fighters,” but many vanished under mysterious circumstances.
After the Assad regime collapsed, a Palestinian prisoner originally from Jenin in the northern West Bank was released from Sednaya.
He had been imprisoned since 1985, al-Rifai said.
Without disclosing the details of his arrest, al-Rifai identified him as former prisoner Bashar Saleh, who is currently in Damascus and receiving a monthly stipend from President Abbas until arrangements for his return to Jenin are finalised.
Al-Rifai also stated that families in the West Bank have informed him during visits to the occupied territory that several of their relatives disappeared in Syria years ago, but Assad’s regime has provided no answers regarding their fate.
