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Syrians Face Horror, Fearing Loved Ones May Be in Mass Graves

People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP
People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP
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Syrians Face Horror, Fearing Loved Ones May Be in Mass Graves

People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP
People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus - AFP

After losing hope of finding his two brothers among those freed from Syrian jails, Ziad Alaywi was filled with dread, knowing there was only one place they were likely to be: a mass grave.

"We want to know where our children are, our brothers," said the 55-year-old standing by a deep trench near Najha, southeast of Damascus.

"Were they killed? Are they buried here?" he asked, pointing to the ditch, one of several believed to hold the bodies of prisoners tortured to death.

International organizations have called these acts "crimes against humanity".

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime on December 8 and the takeover by an Islamist-led opposition alliance, families across Syria have been searching for their loved ones.

"I've looked for my brothers in all the prisons," said the driver from the Damascus suburbs, whose siblings and four cousins were arrested over a decade ago.

"I've searched all the documents that might give me a clue to their location," he added, but it was all in vain.

Residents say there are at least three other similar sites, where diggers were frequently seen working in areas once off-limits under the former government.

- 'Peace of mind' -

The dirt at the pit where Alaywi stands looks loose, freshly dug. Children run and play nearby.

If the site was investigated, "it would allow many people to have peace of mind and stop hoping for the return of a son who will never return", he said.

"It's not just one, two, or three people who are being sought. It's thousands."

He called on international forensic investigators to "open these mass graves so we can finally know where our children are."

Many Syrians who spoke to AFP in recent days expressed disappointment at not finding their loved ones in the prisons opened after the takeover by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

A few kilometres (miles) from Najha, a team of about 10 people, most in white overalls, was transferring small white bags into larger black ones with numbers.

Syrian Civil Defense teams have received numerous calls from people claiming to have seen cars dumping bags by the roadside at night. The bags were later found to contain bones.

"Since the fall of the regime, we've received over 100 calls about mass graves. People believe every military site has one," said civil defence official Omar al-Salmo.

- Safeguard evidence -

The claim isn't without reason, said Salmo, considering "the few people who've left prisons and the exponential number of missing people."

There are no official figures on how many detainees have been released from Syrian jails in the past 10 days, but estimates fall far short of the number missing since 2011.

In 2022, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor estimated that more than 100,000 people had died in prison, mostly due to torture, since the war began.

"We're doing our best with our modest expertise," said Salmo. His team is collecting bone samples for DNA tests.

On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch urged the new Syrian authorities to "secure, collect and safeguard evidence, including from mass grave sites and government records... that will be vital in future criminal trials".

The rights group also called for cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which could "provide critical expertise" to help safeguard the records and clarify the fate of missing people.

Days after Assad's fall, HRW teams visiting Damascus's Tadamun district, the site of a massacre in April 2013, found "scores of human remains".

In Daraa province, Mohammad Khaled regained control of his farm in Izraa, seized for years by military intelligence.

"I noticed that the ground was uneven," said Khaled.

"We were surprised to discover a body, then another," he said. In just one day, he and others including a forensic doctor exhumed a total of 22 bodies.

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Syrian Jails Were an Extortion Machine Funding Ousted Rulers

This picture shows empty cells at the Saydnaya prison, north of the Syrian capital Damascus, on December 15, 2024. (AFP)
This picture shows empty cells at the Saydnaya prison, north of the Syrian capital Damascus, on December 15, 2024. (AFP)
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Syrian Jails Were an Extortion Machine Funding Ousted Rulers

This picture shows empty cells at the Saydnaya prison, north of the Syrian capital Damascus, on December 15, 2024. (AFP)
This picture shows empty cells at the Saydnaya prison, north of the Syrian capital Damascus, on December 15, 2024. (AFP)

Ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's vast network of prisons was not simply a tool of his brutal crackdown on opposition to his rule, it was a money-making machine for his supporters.

Desperate Syrians, clinging to the dream of seeing missing sons, husbands and sisters again, say they were systematically shaken down for bribes that together amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.

And, worse, in many cases the assorted officials, lawyers, grifters and Assad clan hangers-on demanding the cash failed to deliver news of the detainees, many tens of thousands of whom are now dead, rights monitors say.

Sanaa Omar, a 38-year-old woman from the northern city of Aleppo, came to the capital Damascus seeking news of her brother Mohammed, who went missing when he was 15.

"My brother has been missing since 2011," she told AFP at a city hospital morgue where opposition fighters had deposited unidentified corpses found in Damascus prisons.

"We looked in all of the prisons in Aleppo, in all of the branches. We paid everyone: lawyers would promise us they knew where he was and said they would bring documents, but they never did.

"My dad would go every year to Damascus and meet with lawyers or people who would say they work with the government. They would take 200,000 or 300,000 or 400,000 (Syrian pounds) and we'd pay them," she said.

"They'd say: 'You'll see him in month'. We'd wait for one month, two months, three months... but they never brought us a visitor's pass. We paid them for nearly five years, but in the end, we lost hope."

Two years ago, before last week's dramatic collapse of the Assad's rule in the face of a lightning offensive by opposition fighters, a rights group tried to estimate how much detainees' families had paid over the years.

- Abandoned ledgers -

The Association of Detainees and Missing Persons at Saydnaya prison carried out hundreds of interviews to ask how much families had paid in return for the promise of information, a visit or a release from jail.

Based on its data, the association estimated that government officials and supporters had made almost $900 million. Hundreds of thousands of people have been detained since protests erupted against Assad's rule in early 2011.

Now, 13 years later, the gates of Saydnaya Prison, a grim, grey-walled complex squatting over an arid valley dotted with plush villas 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Damascus, hang open.

Instead of paying officials or intermediaries for scraps of information, relatives leaf desperately through abandoned ledgers looking for news of the missing.

"I'm looking for my brother. He's been in Saydnaya since 2019," said Hassan Hashem, a thickset young man who came from the city of Hama in a last desperate attempt to find answers.

"My brother used to come and visit him, but they took him a year ago for re-investigation at Branch 28. After that we tried to follow him and people were taking money from us for information.

"'He'll get out today. He'll get out tomorrow.' We paid more than $12,000. He's married and has four daughters. He never did anything wrong," Hashem said, his face darkening with anger.

When his brother, convicted of "international terrorism and bearing arms against the state", was moved to the Mazzeh air base in Damascus, the family was put in touch with the relative of a senior regime official.

"He said they'd need $100,000 to get him out. I told him if I sold my entire village I wouldn't make $100,000. Where am I supposed to get that kind of money?"

Now awed civilians and armed opposition fighters wander Saydnaya's cell-lined concrete halls, kicking over the filthy abandoned sleeping mats that show inmates were packed 20 to a cell.

Rescuers have punched holes in walls to investigate rumors of secret levels housing missing prisoners, but many thousands of families are disappointed -- their relatives are probably dead and may never be found.

- Mother's Day promise -

On the ground floor of one wing, fighters and visitors pause in front of a hydraulic press that former detainees say was used to crush prisoners during torture sessions.

The floor of a neighboring room, with more industrial equipment, is slick with foul-smelling grease.

Ayoush Hassan, 66, came from the Aleppo countryside to find her son.

"A month ago, I paid 300,000 Syrian pounds for them to check his record, and they said he is in Saydnaya and is in good health," she told AFP outside the jail, her anger rising as despair gripped her.

"Not here. Not here. He's not with us!" she cried, describing how she had found court records burnt, and as a crowd gathered to hear of her grief.

"We want our children, alive, dead, burned, ashes, buried in mass graves... just tell us," she said.

"They lied to us. We've been living on hope. We've been living on hope for 13 years, thinking he'll get out this month, in the next two months or this year or on Mother's Day... it's all lies."