On December 9, 2024, multiple Yemeni and Syrian sources reported the identification of a Yemeni doctor who had been forcibly disappeared in the prisons of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since January 2013.

Syrian journalist and activist Omar Madina posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the released detainee is Dr. Riyad Ahmed Abdullah Al-Omaisi from Hajjah governorate, who emerged from prison suffering from memory loss after his long incarceration.

Yemeni sources confirmed that Dr. Al-Omaisi obtained his medical degree from the University of Sana'a and had worked in Hajjah before traveling to Syria to pursue further studies during the Syrian revolution. He was arrested and subsequently disappeared in 2013.

Following the widespread circulation of his photo on social media, the state-run newspaper Al-Thawra published a report quoting a relative of Dr. Al-Omaisi, denying that the circulated image was indeed of him.

On December 8, Dr. Al-Omaisi’s family appealed to the Syrian public for assistance in locating him in liberated prisons, emphasizing that he was kidnapped by the Assad regime in late January 2013, and his fate had remained unknown until recently.