Adam Castillo, a security consultant and former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar, was detained upon returning to the country on Thursday, the police source said.

He is being held in connection with a lawsuit filed by the current director of a business organization he previously headed, the source said, adding that he faces allegations of breach of trust related to property matters, which carry a potential prison sentence of up to 10 years under Myanmar law.

A court on Friday ordered Castillo remanded in custody for two weeks while investigations continue, the source said.

A second source confirmed the detention but provided no additional details.

The US State Department said it was aware of reports regarding the detention of a US citizen in Myanmar but declined to comment further, citing privacy considerations.

Castillo recently published a memoir documenting his experience working in Myanmar during and after the 2021 military coup, which toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and triggered widespread unrest and civil conflict.

Myanmar has remained under military-dominated rule since the coup, despite a political transition process that international observers have described as tightly controlled and largely excluding opposition groups.

The case comes amid ongoing tensions between Myanmar’s military authorities and parts of the international business and diplomatic community that scaled back operations following the coup.

The commission said its findings followed multiple verification and analysis procedures conducted in coordination with Syrian authorities, marking a significant development in one of the country’s most prominent unresolved disappearance cases.

Al-Abbasi, her husband Abdul Rahman Yasin, and their six children, who were between three and 15 years old at the time, vanished in March 2013 after security forces raided their home in Damascus, according to rights organizations.

Their disappearance became a symbol of the broader issue of missing detainees and forcibly disappeared civilians during Assad’s rule.”We have reached reliable and corroborating results that allow us to conclude with a high degree of professional certainty that Dr. Rania Al-Abbasi’s children are deceased,” the commission said in a statement.

It added that efforts to locate the children’s remains were continuing.The commission was established by Syria’s new authorities in May 2025 to investigate cases involving missing and forcibly disappeared persons following Assad’s ouster in 2024.Hassan Al-Abbasi, Rania’s brother, confirmed the children’s deaths in a video posted on Facebook.

He said family members had viewed video recordings linked to a suspect accused of involvement in a 2013 massacre in a Damascus district.According to Hassan Al-Abbasi, one recording showed children being accused of financing terrorism.

He said the children in the footage were identified as members of the Al-Abbasi family.The fate of Rania Al-Abbasi and her husband remains officially unresolved. Contact with both was lost after their arrest, and while rights groups and media reports have suggested they may have died, no official confirmation or recovery of their remains has been reported.

The case underscores the scale of Syria’s missing persons crisis, which includes detainees who disappeared in government prisons, civilians who went missing during years of conflict, and individuals who vanished at checkpoints or while fleeing violence.The Syrian conflict began in 2011 after a government crackdown on anti-government protests and evolved into a prolonged civil war.

Tens of thousands of people were detained or disappeared during the conflict.The commission said last year that the number of people who went missing over decades of Assad family rule could exceed 300,000.