Mr. Mahmoud Badr HOZBOR, (محمود بدر هزبر) was born in 1972 in Syria, the country of his nationality, in Al Ghoutah Al Sharquia, Village Dir Al Asafir in Damascus.

Until his arrest on July 3, 2003, he worked as salesman in the Al Saqa'abi Company  in Saudi Arabia, in the city of Sekaka (Al Jouf).

His family, consisting of his wife and four children, is currently without a regular residence permit in that same city of Sekaka. The authorities refuse because of this fact to allow his children to attend school and his family, without resources, is also deprived of care.

Mr. Hozbor was arrested by the General Intelligence (Al Mabahit Al Aama) on 03 July 2003 while he was traveling by road with his family, heading for his his country to sepnd the holidays.

He was summoned to stop and was then violently taken from his vehicle by agents of the intelligence services, beaten in front of his wife and children and taken to an unknown destination.

For more than six months, his family was unable to obtain any information about his whereabouts despite numerous inquiries with the Saudi authorities, in particular the Ministry of Interior. It was through families of other prisoners that the family lerned that he was detained in the Al Hayr prison near Riyadh.

His relatives have taken initial steps to visit him and were able to finally see him in prison in January, 2004 after obtaining permission for a single visit.

It was during that one visit to the prison of Al Hayr that his wife was told that he had been subjected to severe torture and particularly inhuman and degrading treatment and that he had been held a total isolation for several months.

His family has also learned the circumstances under which he appeared in an unfair trial as a result of which he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for an alleged case of non denunciation of persons sought by the intelligence services .

According to the story he narrated to his wife, he was taken from his cell a few days after his arrest in the middle of the night, taken blindfolded to an unknown location and brought to an office where there were several people.

The person who appeared to be a magistrate, to whom he complained at the outset of the treatment he had suffered ordered him to remain silent, saying: "Shut up, you deserve hanging."

That person then read what proved to be an indictment, and he said he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

Some time after the notification of the conviction and the visit by his family, he was transferred, according to information received by his wife from other families of prisoners, to the detention centre of the intelligence services of Al Jouf.

Despite their efforts, his family was unable to obtain official confirmation of this information and has not been allowed to visit him.

At the end of the prison sentence, on 03 January 2005, Mr. Hozbor was not released.
He is still detained, more than three years after the expiration of his sentence, in a place not specified, without family visits or ability to seek a lawyer to assist him to challenge the legality of his detention.

His family is now much more worried as Mr.Hozbor has been transferred to another prison and he is no longer in that of Al Jouf. His family fears that he might continue to face torture and ill-treatment because this secret detention.

Mr. Hozbor is deprived of his liberty in an arbitrary fashion since his arrest in July 2003, i.e. for more than four years, which constitutes a serious violation of his most basic rights. Internal Saudi legal norms as well as international standards enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have undoubtedly been violated.