Syrian regime security forces arrested at least 342 citizens from former opposition-held areas where reconciliation and settlement has been recently reached based on Russian assurances, announced the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in a report.
The arrests were made between early September and November 13.
It said the settlements appear to be only “fictitious promises and false guarantees.” It cited the regime’s ongoing abusive raids and arrests in Daraa city and its countryside, southern Damascus, Eastern and Western al-Ghouta and the northern countryside of Homs.
The monitor indicated that the regime also carried out raids and arrested displaced people from al-Rukban camp, who have returned to their cities, towns and villages under the Russian guarantees.
The regime arrested citizens from the above mentioned areas under various pretexts, such as communicating with relatives in the Syrian north and evading military conscription.
The Russians are unable to guarantee the lives of civilians, who refuse to seek refuge in the Syrian north and preferred to stay in their homes and their areas, noted the Observatory. It added that the regime’s intelligence agencies stripped them of their freedom and threw them in their security detention facilities.
“We at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights call on international community and regional and international organizations to work diligently and earnestly, so that the file of tens of thousands of detainees and abductees is given priority at any political meeting, conference or negotiation,” it pleaded.
It urged the implementation of practical steps to release the detainees. It called on the international community, specifically the UN Secretary-General, Security Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, to act immediately by pressuring the regime to release the detainees and establish a court to bring the criminals to justice.
On Monday, the Observatory reported that the regime in the Rukn al-Din area arrested a woman on charges of “contacting her relatives in northern Syria.”
Her case is part of a series of arbitrary arrests that the regime’s security services carry out in all of their controlled areas, especially areas of “reconciliations and settlements.”
