By Paula Astatih
Asharq Al-Awsat,  Beirut, May 13, 2012 – According to opposition forces, the Syrian regime, after signing its agreement with UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, has transferred most of its political detainees from prisons to military centers, which the international observers currently deployed in the country are not permitted to visit, within the framework of what the regime claims to be respect for Syrian sovereignty and national security.
In this regard, forces in the Syrian opposition are organizing media campaigns to pressure and urge the UN observers to enquire about the fate of these detainees, who are now classified as “forcibly disappeared persons” because their families and relatives know nothing of their whereabouts or whether they are dead or alive.
Radwan Ziadeh, a spokesman for the Syrian National Council (SNC) and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies, has taken up this cause. His brother, Yasin Ziadeh, was arrested on the 30th August 2011 by Syrian Air Force intelligence personnel and was detained in the air force intelligence center at the Mazzah Airfield for nearly three months.
Based on the experience of his brother, Radwan Ziadeh asserts: “Thousands of political detainees are currently being held in this and other centers that belong to the 4th Division, which is led by Maher al-Assad, brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in order to prevent international observers from inspecting their situation.”
Ziadeh told Asharq Al-Awsat: “As soon as we lose trace of detainees and their families are unable to contact them to learn if they are alive or have been killed, they are considered forcibly disappeared persons. On this basis, we believe that the regime is currently practicing the crime of forced disappearances and we believe that the number of disappeared people has exceeded 30,000.”
Ziadeh recalled that the Syrian regime carried out forced disappearance crimes in the 1980s, and noted that now it is doing so on a larger scale.
He said: “The regime forces youths to join the military service and then places them in volatile hotspots where they are prevented from communicating with their families, who no longer know whether their children are alive or not. This practice also falls under the category of forced disappearance.”
Commenting on the role that the opposition, particularly the SNC, plays in efforts to discover what has happened to these detainees, Ziadeh spoke of its “critical media role, and coordination with international organizations and observers.”
He added: “Furthermore, human rights organizations work to document cases of forced disappearance in order to present their files to international tribunals or the International Criminal Court at a later date, or even to a future transitional government in Syria.”
Yasin Ziadeh was arrested on the 30th August 2011 and released in November the same year. After his arrest, his family told Amnesty International that he did not take part in the current pro-reform protests. It is believed that he was arrested for his family ties with his exiled brother, Radwan, who resides in the United States and who is a spokesman for the SNC and head of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies.
Yasin Ziadeh was released without further charge. The reasons for his arrest and release continue to be unclear to his family. The Syrian Interior Ministry issued a statement on the 5th November last year in which it announced the release of 553 detainees, who had “participated in the events but whose hands were not stained with blood.” It is believed that Yasin Ziadeh was among them.
A few days ago, the SNC called on the UN Security Council to pass a binding resolution forcing the Syrian regime to stop “escalating its policy of the arrest, killing and systematic torture of detainees.”
The SNC also called on international observers to “frequently pay unannounced visits to prisons and detention centers.”
The SNC’s statement said: “According to the most reliable and conservative statistics, there are more than 20,000 detainees and missing people, including hundreds of women and children.”
rallying points.