Following the fall of the Assad government in December 2024, Syrians allowed themselves to hope: with the old security system gone, so too would go arbitrary detention, torture and deaths in custody. From the outset they demanded freedom and dignity for all, without discrimination, and the transitional government said the right things in return, promising quick responses to reports of human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, and deaths and torture in prison. After the massacres in the coastal region in March 2025 and in As-Suwayda that July, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa duly ordered an inquiry committee, ostensibly to secure immediate accountability for those responsible. Yet eighteen months on, arrests and torture in prison have continued. Two cases stand out: the death of Mohammad Ghamira in Latakia, and the arrest of Syrian-British activist Hassan Akkad from a café in Damascus.
Mohammad Ghamira, a 29-year-old father of two, suffered from haemophilia, a rare genetic disorder that impairs the body’s ability to form blood clots. He had been summoned to the Al-Haffah police station in Latakia over an alleged theft, unaware the summons would end in torture. He was held for three days, then taken to hospital on 9 August as his condition critically worsened; he died a week later. His family had already warned the authorities that striking him could prove fatal. Once the media picked up the story, Interior Minister Anas Khattab moved fast, ordering an inquiry committee with a 72-hour deadline. Its conclusion: Ghamira died from a blow to the neck delivered by an interrogator who ignored the family’s warnings. The interrogator was referred to the Public Prosecutor, and the inquiry was widened to cover several others.
Arrested Without a Warrant?
Ghamira’s case is not an isolated incident; plenty of others have been recorded. Hassan Akkad, a Syrian-British filmmaker and activist, was arrested at a café in Damascus over legal complaints tied to his social media activity and his campaign, Give Us the Money You Owe. No one showed him a warrant, and when he asked officers to identify themselves or let him call his lawyer, a masked officer refused. Akkad, who had already been detained twice under Assad, was released after four days. His arrest rested on Syria’s Cybercrime Law, first passed in 2012 and amended in 2022, which criminalises broad categories of online expression. That matters because, whatever the progress claimed on press freedom since Assad’s fall, the old laws are still being used to punish people for what they say online. These measures were inherited straight from the Assad government, where they served the same purpose: silencing people. Their survival under the new authorities raises a fair question over how much the legal environment for free expression has actually changed.
From Legal Guarantees to Institutional Practice
Syria’s post-Assad record is a study in contradiction. The authorities are quick with statements, promises of accountability, and investigative committees; genuine accountability is another matter. Eighteen months after the coastal region and As-Suwayda massacres, the response has been largely symbolic, and this despite reports from international committees that clearly implicate pro-government groups. The Ghamira case fits the same mould. Anas Khattab insisted he had followed it from the start and that any violation of citizens’ rights was unacceptable and unconstitutional; deaths in custody kept happening anyway, including that of Ali Al-Qouzi, an Alawite man who died this month after months in detention that never drew public attention. On Akkad, the Ministry of Justice announced on 21 June 2026 that it would form legal and technical committees to review existing laws, including the Cybercrime Law. Arrests under that same law have continued regardless. The gap between promise and practice is not subtle. Article 13 of the 2025 Constitutional Declaration guarantees freedom of opinion and expression on paper, but institutional dysfunction and bureaucratic weakness undercut it in practice, not least because of how much executive power sits with the president, and how little independence the judiciary has. Rights exist in the text of the constitution; whether they exist in practice depends on institutions too weak to hold anyone to account.
What Comes Next
The Ghamira and Akkad cases are not two isolated stories; they describe a pattern. Both showed a government willing to gesture at accountability, but only once public opinion forced the issue. No such pressure followed the death of Ali Al-Qouzi, and none moved the government to act on Amnesty International’s report on five people detained for months under the cybercrime law. Accountability here tracks public reaction, not institutional process. Syrians are pinning some hope on the new People’s Assembly to close that gap, through oversight and, potentially, repeal of the cybercrime law. But one third of its members were appointed directly by the president, and the other two thirds through electoral colleges the president also appointed, which raises obvious doubts about how independent, or how representative of Syria’s diversity, the Assembly can really be. In the end, credibility will not come from pledges. It will come from whether the state responds consistently when things go wrong, and whether it stops them happening again through accountability that is real rather than performative.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
