As much as she despises Bashar Al Assad, part of Bouthaina Al Farhan, 60, wishes the dictator had never been toppled.
As the regime collapsed, so did her confidence that she would ever be reunited with her son, Abdallah, who was 15 when he disappeared in 2013.
When the former rebels took over the country and released tens of thousands of detainees from dungeons, she hurried, like many others, to Sednaya, Syria’s most fearsome prison, on the outskirts of Damascus, combing its serpentine corridors and filthy cells in the hope of finding her son.
The prison’s dark corners revealed untold atrocities and horrendous living conditions, scenes she said still haunt her today. But they offered no sign that Abdallah had ever been there.
After days of frantic searching inside the prison, she found nothing that could lead her to her son. Her search of hospitals and morgues ended the same way: Abdallah was nowhere to be found.
Like him, tens of thousands of people disappeared into the Assad regime’s sprawling network of detention centres during Syria’s ruinous 13-year civil war. Considered opponents of the former regime, many were executed or tortured to death.
Syria’s file on the disappeared is one of the most sensitive issues facing the transitional cabinet, formed in March, which has
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