Syria's missing detainees: A year after Assad's fall, families languish without answers

By Khalil Ashawi and Maya Gebeily for Reuters Photo: AFP / MADS CLAUS RASMUSSEN Dictator's overthrow raised hope missing detainees could soon be found Families say post-Assad authorities have yet to resolve fate of loved ones Estimated 150,000 vanished in Assad's notorious prisons Syria hopes to publish database of missing in 2026 Rights activists criticise government's centralised approach A year after dictator Bashar al-Assad's ouster in Syria, little has changed in Amina Beqai's desperate quest. She types her missing husband's name yet again into an internet search box, hoping for answers to a 13-year-old question. In vain. Beqai has nowhere else to turn. A National Commission for Missing Persons established in May has been gathering evidence of enforced disappearances under Assad, but has yet to offer families any clues on the estimated 150,000 people who vanished in his notorious prisons. They include Beqai's husband Mahmoud, arrested by Syria's security forces at their home near Damascus on 17 April 2012, and her brother Ahmed, detained in August that year. Assad's overthrow initially stirred hope that prison records could tell families if, when and how their loved ones died. Mass graves dug by Assad's forces across Syria could be exhumed. Victims could be properly buried. None of that has transpired. "It's been a year. They didn't do anything... Is it thinkable that they didn't even get the documents for these men? Showing us the truth is what we want," Beqai told Reuters. Fading hopes As rebels swept through Syrian towns last year on the way to capturing Damascus, they rushed first to the jails, flinging doors open to free thousands of bewildered prisoners. On 8 December 2024, hours after Assad fled to Russia, rebels freed dozens of prisoners from Sednaya, dubbed "the human slaughterhouse" by Amnesty International for the industrial-scale torture and executions undertaken there. The emerging detainees did not include Beqai's loved ones. "When the prisons were open, and they didn't come back - that was the shock. That was when the hope ended, it really died," Beqai said. But she demands to know how, when and where her husband and brother may have died. With no updates from the national commission, Beqai said she had become "obsessed" with her online hunt, scouring pictures of dead detainees and scans of prison documents published by Syrian news outlets who entered jails and security branches after Assad's fall. "All there is left to do is sit and search," she said. Such documents have revealed crucial information. Sarah al-Khattab last saw her husband heading into a police station in Syria's south on 9 February 2019 to reconcile with Assad's government after years holed up with insurgents. She has had no news of him since. A spreadsheet of dead Sednaya prisoners seen by Reuters after Assad's fall included his name, Ali Mohsen al-Baridi, dating his death as October 22, 2019 from "stopped pulse and breathing" with orders that the body not be given to his family. Reuters passed its finding to the Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre, an advocacy group working with families of the missing, who informed Khattab. Commission seeks helps, oversight The national commission was established by new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former rebel leader. The commission's media adviser, Zeina Shahla, told Reuters its mandate includes any missing Syrian, no matter the circumstances. "When it comes to the pain of the families, maybe we really are being slow. But this file needs progress to come carefully, in a way that is scientific and systemic and not rushed," she said. Next year, the commission hopes to launch a database of all the missing using documents from prisons and other locations. Exhuming mass graves requires more technical expertise and probably won't happen until 2027, Shahla said. The commission has met with Syrian advocacy groups and some families. In November, it signed a cooperation agreement with the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Commission on Missing Persons, which have global expertise on the issue. Syria's commission hopes that will lead to more training for its personnel and access to equipment in short supply in Syria, including DNA testing labs for exhumed remains. "We welcome any kind of cooperation and support we can receive, as long as the issue remains under (our commission's) authority,Gǥ Shahla said. Relatives, activists demand better The government's approach has upset organisations who developed expertise on enforced disappearances while in exile during the Assad era, six rights groups told Reuters. Many were excited to apply that knowledge on the ground with Assad gone, but say the government's centralised approach has excluded them, slowed progress and left families in limbo. "When you have as many as a quarter of a million people missing, you can't do that. You break up the work," said Ahmad...

Syria's missing detainees: A year after Assad's fall, families languish without answers

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