The Syrian regime uses amnesty decrees to entice displaced Syrians to return back to an unsafe Syria, where it continues to arbitrarily detain tens of thousands of detainees. For over a decade, the regime has been deploying its media machine to manipulate public opinion and cover its crimes and practices through amnesty decrees after relentlessly killing, torturing, imprisoning, starving, and displacing its people. After the Tadamon neighborhood massacre has been revealed to the world, the Syrian regime resorted to issuing an amnesty decree to save its face. 

Some 68 per cent of those interviewed by SACD surveys are themselves or have a relative who is wanted for arrest by either the security services or Assad’s military. Forced conscription into Assad’s forces is rampant, especially in areas integrated under “reconciliation agreements”, where up to 75 per cent of those interviewed or their family members were wanted for recruitment. Conscripted fighters are almost inevitably sent to the most dangerous frontlines; many, especially young men, have been killed either in battle or in murky circumstances. Many of those wanted by the security branches for being perceived as “anti-Assad” are forced into the military and sent to the frontlines straight from detention and are never seen again. 

 The survey report also indicates how half of the respondents attributed their feelings of insecurity to the fact that they or a family member were in danger of being arrested because they were against the regime (fear of being arrested). Forced conscription into Assad’s forces is rampant, especially in areas integrated under “reconciliation agreements,” where up to 75 per cent of those interviewed or their family members were wanted for recruitment. Conscripted fighters are almost inevitably sent to the most dangerous frontlines; many, especially young men, have been killed in battle or murky circumstances.    

Furthermore, our surveys with returnees indicated that 1 per cent of the total respondents returned because of amnesties, and this low percentage reflects the returnees’ mistrust of the amnesty decrees. 37 per cent of returnees or one of their relatives had been wanted by security services and had dared to return because they could not endure life in areas of displacement or asylum. 

SACD findings have shown that 19 per cent confirmed that the arrests were against people previously covered by one of the amnesty laws and decrees issued by the regime, and 26 per cent had signed reconciliation agreements.

Among the respondents whose relatives are supposed to be covered in theory by the amnesty decrees issued, 79 per cent of them did not benefit from these decrees. There was no release of people from their communities due to the amnesty laws. The rest of the respondents were divided into 21 per cent of the respondents who mentioned the positive effects of the amnesty decisions on the actual value of these decisions, and only 12 per cent who believed that the benefit of these decrees is real; While the rest said that the people who benefited from the amnesty decrees have either already had completed their sentence, or were arrested shortly before the laws were issued without any reason. 

The regime forces continued to pursue and arrest people who settled their security situation in the areas that had previously signed settlement agreements with him and concentrated in the governorates of Aleppo, Damascus countryside, and Daraa. Before 2020, at least 307 arrests were against people who had settled their security situation. 

According to the documentation of the Voice of the Capital, more than 200 of those who signed settlement agreements and allegedly “volunteered” in the ranks of the regime forces and its militias from the eastern and western countryside of Damascus have been killed on the fighting fronts in northern Syria since the beginning of 2019. Also, the Voice of the Capital documented, during 2019, more than 1,200 cases of arrests carried out by the intelligence of the Assad regime and its military checkpoints in and around Damascus, including several settlement elements and those wanted for compulsory and reserve military service, in addition to many women, on charges of telephone contact with wanted persons by the regime. Several young men were also arrested on charges that “regime intelligence” said were related to “terrorism”.