The family are believed to be in incommunicado detention, where they are at risk of torture.

In a statement issued recently by Amnesty International, the human rights organisation said that Randa Ayyubi (40 years), her husband Mamduh Tatari (46 years, agricultural engineer) and their eldest son Muhammad Adib Tatari (15 years, schoolboy) have "disappeared", apparently after Randa Ayyubi made an anti-government remark in the street outside the family apartment, in Rukn al-Din, Damascus. She, her husband and eldest son were arrested by security forces on the same evening, 17th October 1999, leaving their three other children, aged six, five, and 18 months, alone at home, with nobody to look after them