Full Name: Majd Kamalmaz

Alternative Name:

Case Status: Missing

Record ID#: 0213

*The names “Jane Doe”  and “John Doe” are English names used when the person’s true name is not known. If used above, the name refers to a person of unknown identity.

Date of Birth*: January 6, 1958
Birthplace: Syria
Age at the Time: 59
Age Group: 50s
Biological Sex: Male
Hair: Grey or Silver
Eyes: Brown
Skin Complexion:
Shoe Size:
Ethnicity: Middle Eastern
Nationality: Syria, United States
Languages Spoken:

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

Physical Build:

Height:

Weight

Distinguishing Marks:

• Medical Condition

Medical Condition: He is diabetic and requires regular medicine.
Physical Abnormality:
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Other Descriptors: He was a Psychologist.

Clothing

Possessions:

Overnight bag containing pajamas.

Date of the Disappearance*: February 15, 2017

Description: Majd Kamalmaz was a dedicated psychotherapist and humanitarian whose life was defined by compassion for those shattered by conflict and disaster. Born in Syria on January 6, 1958, he immigrated to the United States as a young man, where he built a family, pursued his education, and established a career helping trauma survivors. By the mid-2010s, Kamalmaz had co-founded mental health initiatives with the Syrian American Medical Society, providing therapy to refugees in Lebanon and Jordan who had endured the horrors of Syria’s civil war. He was a father of five, grandfather to 14, and a pillar of his community in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, where he lived with his wife of over 40 years. Described by his family as “kindhearted, loving, and caring,” Kamalmaz embodied a quiet heroism, traveling to aid victims after events like Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia, and wars in Kosovo and Bosnia.

In early 2017, amid the grinding brutality of Syria’s ongoing war, Kamalmaz’s personal life pulled him back to his homeland. His father-in-law had recently passed away from cancer, and a close relative was battling the same illness. At age 59, and despite the dangers posed, Kamalmaz decided to make a brief trip from his base in Lebanon to Damascus. He was diabetic and not politically active—his work was purely humanitarian. As a dual U.S.-Syrian citizen, he crossed the border from Lebanon on February 14, 2017, without issue.

That evening, he called his wife from a family member’s home in Damascus, his voice steady and reassuring as he reassured her that he had arrived safely. It was the last time his family would hear from him. The next day, February 15, Kamalmaz set out to visit his ill relative. He was traveling by taxi within Damascus and the taxi driver was with him at the time of the incident. According to the driver, Kamalmaz was stopped at a regime checkpoint in the Mezzeh neighborhood, a suburb of Damascus known for its military installations. Witnesses later reported that Syrian government security forces detained him there, bundling him into a separate government vehicle and vanishing him into the country’s infamous network of prisons. The Assad regime denied any knowledge of his whereabouts.

Word of the abduction reached Kamalmaz’s family through contacts in Syria, who confirmed he never arrived at his destination. Initial reports suggested he might have been taken to Mezzeh Airbase prison or the even more notorious Saydnaya prisons. One former detainee later contacted the family with proof-of-life from 2017, recounting a brief conversation with Kamalmaz in custody, but after that, silence. The family, reeling from the shock, turned to U.S. authorities. The FBI issued a public appeal for information, adding Kamalmaz to its Kidnappings and Missing Persons list, while the State Department classified him as wrongfully detained.

Hope flickered briefly in 2020 when U.S. negotiators visited Damascus, but the regime demanded unreasonable concessions and provided no proof of life. By early 2024, after seven years of fruitless searches, U.S. intelligence gathered “specific and highly credible” classified evidence pointing to Kamalmaz’s death in custody. On May 18, 2024, eight senior national security officials met with the family in a Washington hotel and delivered the devastating confirmation: He had likely died 5 to 7 years earlier, between 2017 and 2019, from torture or neglect in a regime prison. Maryam Kamalmaz recalled the moment: She asked each official on a scale of 1 to 10 how certain they were; all rated it a 9 or higher. “What more do I need?” she later said. The FBI’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell issued a statement mourning the loss of a “trauma psychologist who worked with individuals affected by war and natural disasters.”

Multiple Victims?: Yes

Rumored or Actual Sightings:

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

Date the Body was Recovered:

Description: Unknown

Time of Death: Estimated between 2017 - 2019

Cause of Death: Unconfirmed, but likely the result of his time as a political prisoner

Recovered Remains (if partial): Not yet recovered

Suspected Homicide?: Yes

Multiple Victims?: Yes

DNA Tested (No Match):

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

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