DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — A Syrian police investigator who slapped a man during interrogation despite having been warned that he had hemophilia will face prosecution, officials said Thursday.
Syria’s interior ministry earlier this week launched an investigation into the death of Mohammad Ghamira and on Thursday announced initial results of the probe.
Ghamira, a 29-year-old father of two, was a former volunteer with the White Helmets civil defense organization,
which operated in opposition-held areas before the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in December 2024.
Ghamira died in a hospital in Latakia on Sunday after being released from jail. He had been detained days earlier following a theft allegation, according to Latakia’s internal security command.
Family members said they had told police that Ghamira had hemophilia, a condition affecting the blood’s ability to clot, and warned against hitting him.
Ghamira's death sparked widespread outrage in Syria, where it stirred up dark memories of torture and other abuse in detention centers under the Assad dynasty’s decades-long rule.
Maj. Gen. Ahmed Latouf, head of the committee formed to investigate Ghamira's death, said Thursday that medical experts found that he had died of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Investigators found that a police interrogator had slapped Ghamira in the neck during interrogation, despite Ghamira having told police personnel about his medical condition, Latouf said.
The interrogator was referred to the public prosecution division, and disciplinary investigations into other police personnel are ongoing, he said.
Rights groups have said that abuses in detention centers have persisted under the country’s new authorities. However, one of the groups, Syrians for Truth and Justice, said it did not find evidence of a “single centralized system equivalent in structure and direction to the torture apparatus entrenched by the Assad regime.”
