At the end of April 2012, Al Allawi was working in the warehouses of the Air Defense Administration located in Marj Al Sultan, in the Rif Dimashq Governorate, Syria. After the warehouses were targeted by the Free Syrian Army, officers investigated Al Allawi for “not defending the warehouses.”
He was then taken to a detention centre belonging to the Air Force Intelligence in Harasta, Rif Dimashq, where he was detained for 70 days. Ten days after he was released, he voluntarily went to the Military Police Station in Qaboun, after he was ordered to serve a 15-day imprisonment as part of a military punishment. Since then, he has never been released, and the authorities have not provided his family with any information relating to his fate and whereabouts.
A former detainee from the detention centre in Qaboun informed Al Allawi’s family that he had seen Allawi on August 20,2012. According to the former detainee, he was then transferred to Sednaya Military Prison on September 5, 2012, where he was later charged and tried by a military field court.
On July 7,2014, Al Allawi’s name was mentioned on a Syrian opposition group’s Facebook page. The group alleged that he is still alive and detained in Sednaya Prison.
Since the start of the conflict in Syria, Sednaya Military Prison has become infamous, being the place where thousands of detainees have been arbitrarily executed by hanging, based on death sentences issued by military field courts following unfair trials.
On September 21, 2020, MENA Rights Group requested the intervention of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances