“For ten years, Rojin Derki hoped her brother Mohammad was still alive and would one day be released from a Syrian government prison after his arrest in 2012.
Yet when a presidential decree last week gave a general amnesty for prisoners, she had mixed feelings.
“It’s an ugly feeling because you don’t know if he is alive, if he will be released, or if he will remember us,” Derki said, holding a photo of her brother at a sit-in on Saturday in Berlin by dozens of Syrians for political detainees.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), which has been documenting the war from outside Syria, said around 200 people have been released so far since the decree, with the total unlikely to exceed 1,800.
“The government has 132,000 Syrian citizens (detained for political reasons), according to SNHR data, of which there are 87,000 forcibly disappeared, meaning they are not included in amnesty decrees,” SNHR head Fadel Abdul Ghany said.”
