The spokesperson for the Syrian Interior Ministry, Nour al-Din al-Baba, announced today, Thursday, 20 November, the removal of around five million travel ban entries imposed by the former regime on citizens.
Speaking at a press conference attended by Enab Baladi in Damascus, al-Baba said the ministry has dealt, from last February until today, with approximately 8.3 million travel ban cases, and that its staff have succeeded in removing about five million of them, distributed across 14 main categories and 129 subcategories.
Regarding the remaining cases, al-Baba explained that work is ongoing, with files classified as follows:
Employees in state institutions whose status is under review, numbering around 1.15 million Contractors or affiliates of security and military bodies who are being investigated for possible involvement in crimes against citizens Those subject to police circulars due to violations or criminal cases, with measures recorded against them at the Ministry of Justice Persons banned from leaving the country in favor of the Ministry of FinanceAl-Baba noted that the “clean up” process is complicated by hundreds of thousands of “arbitrary” entries left by the former regime, such as random names entered for testing software, training, or even out of sheer tampering, which caused serious harm to innocent citizens.
This is in addition to thousands of names with incomplete data, including nearly 50,000 entries labeled “nationality unknown,” according to al-Baba.
He said he believes the entire file can be completed within the next few months, in a way that safeguards citizens’ rights and facilitates their daily affairs.
The spokesperson added that the ministry is aware of the scale of citizens’ suffering due to travel ban measures and is working with other state institutions to remove the legacy of that period and to create a modern administrative environment as part of a digital transformation path that eases the burden of bureaucracy and paper-based procedures on people.
Al-Baba pointed out that one of the most prominent violations committed by the former regime was placing millions of citizens on travel ban lists and stripping tens of thousands of their civil and legal rights, based on databases that were outdated from a technical standpoint and deficient in accuracy and data.
At the same time, these databases are linked to sensitive files that cannot be bypassed all at once, given their overlap with the files of those previously wanted by now dissolved security branches, according to al-Baba.
The violations committed in the past, he said, were tied to procedures affecting the lives of citizens and visitors to Syria, including passport issuance, recording travelers’ movements, security clearances, residency permits, civil status affairs, and the work of diplomatic missions, in addition to related financial procedures.
Since the fall of the former regime, the Interior Ministry has been working to address this problem in cooperation with the Immigration and Passports, Civil Affairs, and Criminal Security departments, as well as the Information Management Directorate, Counterterrorism, and Counter Narcotics units, and in coordination with the General Intelligence Service and the Ministries of Defense and Justice.
150,000 in a matter of days
Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab had earlier announced the deletion of a new batch of “ban measures” from the databases of Immigration and Passports, in order “to ease the burden on citizens and facilitate their travel,” as he put it.
According to what Khattab published on 18 November, a specialized committee from the Information Management Directorate and the Criminal Security and Immigration and Passports departments, in cooperation with the Ministries of Defense and Justice, completed the removal of more than 150,000 measures in recent days.
He said most of these measures relate to old files issued by the Defense and Interior institutions and security agencies of the former regime. The minister noted that this step comes as a continuation of the Interior Ministry decision issued last March, which at that time resulted in deleting about 4.7 million measures related to defection or evasion of compulsory service, or to travel bans imposed for various security reasons.
On 9 March, the Interior Ministry had canceled all travel ban notices that included requests for arrest, referral, notification, or evasion of compulsory and reserve military service issued against Syrian citizens under the former regime, totaling more than five million notices.
Syrian Interior Ministry removes five million names from travel ban lists Enab Baladi.
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