Usually living in Qatar, in 2012, Abdulmalik travelled to Lebanon, where he was arrested on 2 May 2012 and subsequently sentenced for "funding terrorism". Detained in Roumieh prison until the end of his sentence, he was then held for two months at the General Security retention center in Beirut before being deported to Jordan on 27 February 2016. That day, Abdelsalam was put on a flight from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport to Amman Queen Alia International Airport where he disappeared. His family believes that he was first arrested by the border police at the airport, before being handed over to the General Intelligence Directorate (GID). Indeed, since 23 January 2015, Abdelsalam is also listed on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Al Qaeda Sanction List and might therefore be secretly detained by the GID for this very reason. His relatives reached out to the GID to clarify his whereabouts, but were denied any information on his current location.
"We are highly concerned over Abdulmalik's disappearance, as the GID is notorious for secretly detaining and subjecting to torture persons suspected of terrorism in order to extract confessions," affirms Inès Osman, Legal Officer for the Mashreq at Alkarama. "The Jordanian authorities must stop using the fight against terrorism as an excuse to violate the most fundamental rights. They must immediately release Abdulmalik, or, at the very least, put him under the protection of the law and ensure that his due process rights are respected."
Alkarama urges Jordan to implement the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) Concluding Observations issued following the country's review in November 2015, in particular to ensure that detainees are afforded all fundamental safeguards from the very outset of their deprivation of liberty.
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