Fatshimetrie –
More than a week after Bashar al-Assad fled Syria and his regime collapsed, hundreds of thousands of Syrians are still without answers to two questions that have haunted them for years, if not decades.
What happened to their family members and friends who disappeared or were detained by Assad’s secret police? And how can their torturers and killers be brought to justice?
An estimated 150,000 people in Syria are missing, most of them abducted or detained by the Assad regime or its allies, according to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Fatshimetrie cannot independently verify this figure.
With each passing day, Syrians’ faint hopes of finding a loved one alive fade. But they want some form of closure; they scan the walls of prisons and hospitals where lists of names and images of bodies are posted. They cling to a thin hope, yearning for a miracle.
But they also want justice.
Among those waiting for news is Hazem Dakel, originally from Idlib and now in Sweden. His uncle Najeeb was arrested in 2012 and later confirmed by the family as having been killed. His brother Amer was detained the following year. Former inmates of the terrifying Saydnaya prison near Damascus said Amer disappeared in mid-April 2015 after being tortured there. But the regime has never acknowledged his death.
“Knowing that people can now speak out, they are naming people, and I got exact details of what happened in prison, the torture, who tortured him, who interrogated him,” Dakel told Fatshimetrie of his brother.
“I want this new country of Syria to rise again so that we can hold them accountable before the law and the courts.”
Amid the celebrations in Idlib after Assad’s fall, he said, there was also mourning. “They are mourning their children. Yes, the regime fell after resistance and struggle, but there was sadness – like, where are our children?”
“Justice is coming, and our right will not be erased, no matter how long it takes,” Dakel wrote on Facebook. The family is now “certain” that Amer died under torture in Saydnaya, he said.
Human rights groups have begun visiting the many prisons and detention centers across Syria where those considered to be critics of the regime were held. An Amnesty International team inspected the former regime’s security branches around Damascus this week.
Mazjoub also published photographs of torture instruments left behind.
“Nothing could prepare us for what we saw,” said team member Aya Mazjoub.. In a series of posts on X, she described “underground labyrinths (that) are literally hell on Earth. They were overcrowded, infested with cockroaches and other insects, lacked ventilation. They always smelled of blood and death.”
“This is the ‘bisat ar-reeh,’ a notorious torture device where detainees were tied to a wooden board that was bent until their backs cracked,” she wrote.
“This is the ‘doulab.’ Detainees were stuffed into the tire and beaten, usually on the soles of their feet.”
Identifying the bodies found will require a legion of forensic scientists. “Many are unrecognizable, mutilated by years of torture and starvation,” Mazjoub said.
Desperate relatives have taken to social media to share details of missing sons, brothers, fathers and sisters.
In a video posted on X, Lama Saud said her brother Abdullah was detained in 2012. Regime records had recorded his death in 2014, but she said she still had hope that he was alive. “There are many detainees whose families were informed of their deaths but who later turned out to be alive,” she said.
Mahmoud Al Shahabi, a Syrian exile, told Fatshimetrie that he has been waiting for news of his brothers Hikmat and Amir for 12 years.
“We hope to find them, my situation is similar to that of hundreds of thousands of Syrian families who are waiting for news of their loved ones, and we will not lose hope until now.”
So far, he has found no trace.
Al Shahabi also asked on Facebook where the CCTV footage from the regime’s security branches had gone, why some documents had been destroyed, and why human rights groups had not done more to protect the documents.
Preserving all remaining evidence in prisons and around possible burial sites is essential to documenting what happened and identifying those responsible.
But following this trail of evidence is also a race against time. Several human rights groups issued a joint appeal last week, saying: “The true toll will only be known after mass graves and documents are discovered.”
Fatshimetrie will continue to follow this story and give voice to the voices demanding justice for Syria’s forgotten victims.