A Jordanian man has returned to his homeland after spending 38 years in Syrian prisons, during which he lost his memory, a Jordanian official stated today in Amman.
“Osama Bashir Hassan al-Bataineh disappeared at the age of 18 in 1986 and subsequently spent 38 years in the prisons of the Syrian regime, according to his family,” Sufyan al-Qudah, a spokesperson for the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told AFP.
“He was transported from Damascus to the Jaber border crossing (with Jordan), where he was handed over to border guards,” the spokesperson added.
He was found in Syria “unconscious and suffering from amnesia” and was handed over to his family this morning (Tuesday), the spokesperson said, without specifying from which detention centre he was released.
The spokesperson also did not explain how the man was identified despite his poor health condition.
According to the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in Jordan (AOHRJ), “the number of Jordanians detained in Syrian prisons stands at 236, the majority of whom are held in the Sednaya prison near Damascus.”
Many foreign nationals have been detained in Syrian prisons, including Lebanese national Souhail Hamawi, who returned to his homeland yesterday after spending 33 years in the prisons of the Syrian regime.
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Sunday, with the entry of rebels led by the radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) into Damascus, the rebels opened the prisons and released the detainees.
Since the uprising began in 2011, which escalated into a civil war, over 100,000 people have died in Syrian prisons, primarily due to torture, according to estimates by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in 2022. The Observatory reported that approximately 30,000 people were held in Sednaya prison, where prisoners were subjected to severe torture, of whom only 6,000 have been released.
Amnesty International has documented thousands of executions and denounces what it describes as “a deliberate policy of extermination” at Sednaya, referring to it as a “human slaughterhouse.”
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Source: ANA-MPA
