In considerable cases torture leads to death, but the authorities do not acknowledge that. When the corpse of the detainee is handed over to his relatives they are told not to open the coffin and to burry it promptly, while the report of the prison’s doctor explains out the death as the result of a ”sudden heart attack”. A closely related source, for example, mentioned that the corpse of the youth Abdul-Mu’iz al-Salem from Ariha, who had been detained in Palestine Branch, was handed over to his relatives in a black bag on 4 July 2007 under the supervision of the Military Intelligence, and they were instructed to bury him hurriedly in a plot belonging to his father. A similar event had occurred one year before when the Military Intelligence handed the corpse of the detainee Muhammad Shahir Haisa over to his family from Tishreen Military Hospital in Rural Damascus. A special report received by the Syrian Human Rights Committee late in October 2007, mentions that Ibrahim ‘Alwan (35) from Aleppo died under torture in one of the Syrian interrogation centres. On 6 November 2007, a patrol of the Criminal Security Forces beat, kicked and humiliated Ahmad Saleem al-Sheikh (37) in the street till he died under the sight of the by-passers.
Ahmed Abdulghafour Abdulbaqi died under torture also in December 2007. The Authorities attempted to hide this incident by claiming that he had been killed in Iraq, despite records showing that he was detained by Syrian intelligence 5 months ago.