(Beirut) – Syrians fleeing violence in Lebanon face risks of repression and persecution by the Syrian government upon return, including enforced disappearance, torture, and death in detention, Human Rights Watch said today. Since late September 2024, intensified Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have compelled hundreds of thousands of Syrians to flee back to Syria, with strikes killing at least 2,710 people, including at least 207 Syrians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Syrians escaping Lebanon, particularly men, risk arbitrary detention and abuse by Syrian authorities. Human Rights Watch documented four arrests of people returning during this period, while other groups, including the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), reported dozens more. At least two Syrian men deported from Lebanon and Türkiye to Syria since 2023 died in Syrian government detention in suspicious circumstances in 2024, while two others arrested in Lebanon remain forcibly disappeared since they were handed over to Syrian authorities in January and July, informed sources said.
“Syrians fleeing violence in Lebanon are being compelled to return to Syria, even as Syria remains unfit for safe or dignified returns and in the absence of any meaningful reforms to address the root causes of displacement,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The deaths in custody of deportees under suspicious circumstances highlight the blatant risk of arbitrary detention, abuse, and persecution for those fleeing back and the urgent need for effective monitoring of rights violations in Syria.”
The Syrian government and armed groups controlling parts of Syria continue to block humanitarian and human rights organizations from full and unhindered access to all areas, including detention sites, hindering documentation efforts and obscuring the true scale of abuse.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) reported that, between September 24 and October 22, about 440,000 people, 71 percent Syrians and 29 percent Lebanese, fled Lebanon to Syria through official border crossings. Others are believed to have crossed unofficially. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR) and the SARC are leading emergency humanitarian efforts at the border and in host communities, and Syria has so far kept its borders open and eased immigration procedures. Of those, about 50,779 arrived in northeast Syria as of October 25 and 6,600 in northwest Syria as of October 24. A significant number of arrivals are women and children.
Human Rights Watch interviewed three Syrians in Lebanon and eight Syrians who fled to Syria, including relatives of five men arrested by Syrian authorities after they returned from Lebanon in October. Human Rights Watch also interviewed two Syrian human rights researchers who documented other arrests and several people regarding the fate of deportees, including relatives.
Of the five recent arrests Human Rights Watch documented in October, two occurred at the Dabousieh border crossing between northern Lebanon and Homs, and two people were arrested in one incident at a checkpoint between Aleppo and Idlib. All arrests were carried out by the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate, relatives said, with no information provided to families about the reasons for arrests or where detainees were being held.
One woman described fleeing to Syria with her husband, a former Syrian soldier, and four children in October. Her husband, 33, had lived in Lebanon for 13 years, she said. When Israeli shelling intensified in late September, they received an evacuation warning, and fled with nothing, living on the streets for 10 days before securing funds to travel back to Syria. Even though her husband had not registered for reserve military service, she said, they believed that a recent Syrian government amnesty, which included military desertion, would protect him.
On October 7, they crossed into Syria at the Dabousieh border crossing in Homs, where she said Syrian military intelligence immediately arrested her husband. “They told me, ‘Continue on your way, he will stay with us,’” she said. She waited for five hours, pleading for information to no avail. Now living in cramped quarters with her family in Syria, she has no idea of her husband’s whereabouts and struggles to provide for her children. “I wish we stayed under the rockets rather than go through this,” she said, saying her only hope is for her husband’s release.
In Lebanon, reports indicate that many shelters prioritize displaced Lebanese and Palestinian nationals, denying access to Syrians, and that some landlords have evicted their Syrian tenants to make room for displaced Lebanese. Even before the Israeli offensive, Syrians in Lebanon lived in a coercive environment, designed to force them to consider returning to Syria. They faced harsh conditions, rising xenophobia, and deportation.
Some European leaders are increasingly arguing that Syria is safe for returns, driving policies that could revoke refugee protections despite ongoing security and human rights concerns. With unreliable information networks and inadequate monitoring by humanitarian agencies, countries hosting Syrian refugees should recognize that Syria remains unsafe for returns and immediately halt any forced or summary returns or any plan to facilitate such returns, Human Rights Watch said.
The UNHCR should continue to maintain its March 2021 position that Syria is unsafe for returns and that it will not promote or facilitate returns until safe and dignified conditions are ensured. Additionally, as per its 2019 Regional Operational Framework for Refugee Return to Syria, it should urgently push for an independent and effective protection and monitoring mechanism in Syria through which humanitarian organizations are able to monitor and report on human rights violations of returnees.
While international donor governments should provide generous financial and other support to people displaced to Syria, they should ensure that humanitarian programming in both Syria and host countries does not inadvertently provide incentives for premature returns. Countries that have imposed sanctions on Syria, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, and EU countries, should also implement comprehensive humanitarian exemptions for all aid operations in Syria to ensure unrestricted access to essential services.
“Syria is no safer for return than it was before, but the escalating dangers in Lebanon have left many Syrians with nowhere else to go,” Coogle said. “Their return is not a sign of improved conditions in Syria, but of the stark reality that they’re being shut out of safer alternatives and forced back into a country where they still face the risks of detention, abuse, and death.”
Israeli airstrikes have intensified across Syria as well, and fighting across various front lines has also escalated since October 2023, killing and injuring civilians.
Beyond active hostilities, Syrian government persecution of those suspected of holding pro-opposition views is a threat for returning refugees, who are often viewed with suspicion regardless of their political views. Human Rights Watch has documented arbitrary detention, torture, and killings of returning refugees since 2017. Other non-state armed groups have adopted similar abusive detention practices in the areas they control.
As the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) documented in its latest report on Syria, lawlessness pervades the fragmented country, with various forces extorting civilians through violence. Combined with devastating economic and humanitarian conditions that returnees face, they struggle to maintain livelihoods. Human Rights Watch documented economic and humanitarian conditions, including widespread property destruction inside Syria, that in aggregate can threaten returnees’ rights to life, physical integrity, and dignity.
In addition to protecting Syrians from being returned to face violence, torture, and persecution, Human Rights Watch calls on all countries hosting Syrians to halt all forced returns to Syria because of the inhuman and degrading conditions returnees will most likely face that can threaten their rights to life, freedom, and physical integrity.
Accurate and up-to-date information on conditions inside Syria for those considering returning is lacking. A survey of one private Facebook group for Syrians in Lebanon dedicated to sharing practical information and advice indicates confusion and concern among Syrians, particularly as it relates to military service requirements.
Detention, Enforced Disappearances
One 34-year-old Syrian man returned to Syria from Lebanon in October after failing to get a visa to Libya, despite fearing arrest, his wife said, and especially since Syrian authorities had in 2013 detained his 16-year-old brother, who was never heard from again. On October 7, Syrian military intelligence officers arrested him at the Dabousieh border crossing, gave his phone to a friend traveling with him, and told him to inform his family, she said. They have received no updates since but reported the case to the UNHCR. “All we hear are rumors,” his wife said, with some suggesting he was detained for military service, despite completing it in 2013.
On October 8, two 27-year-old Syrian men, fearing arrest over incomplete military service, paid smugglers to help them return to Syria, their relatives told Human Rights Watch. Syrian military intelligence personnel arrested them as they neared the line of control between Aleppo and Idlib, along with two others traveling with them, the relatives later learned from the smugglers. The families, who are unaware of the reason for the arrests, were told by the smugglers that they are negotiating their release, with one relative reporting that they are being asked to pay US$1,000 per person.
A Syrian researcher from Sweida documented four arrests by military intelligence in October. He said that one man was detained at the Jdeidet Yabous border crossing, which his family believes is linked to the man’s participation in 2023 anti-government protests in Sweida, while three others were arrested at a military intelligence checkpoint in the Damascus countryside, apparently in relation to military service.
Noor al-Khatib, a researcher with the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said that the group had documented 26 arrests since late September and reported that the Syrian government had set up new checkpoints along common travel routes from Lebanon.
In May, before the escalation of hostilities in Lebanon, Lebanese Army Intelligence arrested Abedullah al-Zohouri, a former Syrian army captain who had defected and fled to Lebanon in 2013, his lawyer, Mohammed Sablouh, told Human Rights Watch. Two weeks later, his brother said, he received a phone call from an army officer, revealing that al-Zohouri had been handed over to Syrian authorities.
His family, assisted by the Cedar Center for Legal Studies, filed a complaint of enforced disappearance and only learned through unofficial sources that he is detained at Branch 235 of the Syrian Military Intelligence, also known as the Palestine Branch, in Damascus. His situation remains unknown, similar to Raafat al-Faleh, another army defector forcibly deported earlier in January.
Suspicious Deaths in Detention
In the first years following the violent repression of the 2011 uprising, Human Rights Watch and others extensively documented the arbitrary detention and torture of tens of thousands of people by Syrian government forces in what amount to crimes against humanity. In 2013, a military defector code-named Caesar smuggled photos out of Syria that provide irrefutable evidence of widespread torture, starvation, and abuse in Syrian government detention facilities.
Despite an International Court of Justice )ICJ) order to prevent state-sponsored torture, abuses continue. A September UN report confirmed ongoing torture in government custody, including of deported Syrians and military evaders. Detainees remain at risk of enforced disappearance, death from torture, and horrific detention conditions, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups documented two deaths of Syrian men deported from Lebanon and Türkiye to Syria since 2023 in Syrian government detention under suspicious circumstances.
Ahmad Nemer al-Halli, deported from Lebanon in May, was arrested and held incommunicado for about 15 days at the Palestine Branch of the military intelligence before being transferred to a Damascus hospital, where his parents were finally allowed to visit him. Al-Halli died on July 6, about a month later. Both the Syrian Network for Human Rights and the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre reported that he was tortured in detention.
In 2023, Turkish authorities deported Abdulghani Mounir, a 33-year-old Syrian engineer, to Azaz in northern Syria, separating him from his wife and two children. After spending five months there, where he had no meaningful ties, he sought to return to his hometown in government-controlled Aleppo. His family had checked with multiple security branches and, reassured by recent amnesties, believed it was safe for him to return, a rights activist representing Mounir’s family in Türkiye said.
As he made his way back, Syrian authorities arrested Mounir at a military security checkpoint and took him to an undisclosed location. Twenty-four days later, they notified his family in Aleppo of his death and instructed them to retrieve his body. No explanation was given, yet the rights activist told Human Rights Watch that his body bore marks of electrocution.
In addition to cases documented by Human Rights Watch, in August local media reported that another Syrian deportee from Türkiye, Abdullah Hussein al-Akhras, died in detention following torture at the infamous Sednaya prison north of Damascus.
