‘They broke his neck’: Families of Syria’s disappeared still seek closure

A federation inactive searching

A twelvemonth aft Bashar al-Assad’s authorities fell connected December 8, 2024, Syrians are inactive searching for the truth.

The portraits that hung from lampposts person been replaced by the faces of the missing, photocopied pictures taped to shopfronts and walls. Families person searched graveyards and abandoned prisons, hoping a scrap of cloth oregon a portion of insubstantial mightiness springiness them answers.

People clasp pictures of Syrian missing persons astatine a protestation extracurricular the Hijaz bid presumption successful Damascus connected December 15, 2024, demanding accountability [Bakr Alkasem/AFP]

Over 13 years of war, which killed much than fractional a cardinal radical and displaced fractional the country, the authorities and its allies disappeared betwixt 120,000 and 300,000 people, according to the government's National Commission for the Missing.

The strategy that disappeared them was deliberate – a web of informants, concealed police, files and fear. Arrests were made without warrants, implicit a neighbour’s grudge, a relative’s rumour, oregon a bribe.

In the days aft the regime’s collapse, immoderate Syrians celebrated. Others ran to the prisons. At Sednaya Prison, radical grabbed immoderate documents they could, arsenic papers were trampled into the crushed and important grounds disappeared underfoot. Families searched for loved ones, adjacent beneath the floors - what they recovered were ropes, chains, and electrical cables.

Only a fewer families were reunited aft al-Assad’s fall.

For the rest, grief and anticipation coexist arsenic the whereabouts of the disappeared stay unknown.

The caller government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has pledged to uncover the truth. In May 2025, decrees created the National Commission for the Missing and the National Commission for Transitional Justice. Advisory boards person been appointed, and authorities is being drafted.

But advancement is dilatory successful a federation stripped of laboratories, specialists, and funds. Officials admit they look a mammoth task: gathering a nationalist database, recruiting forensic experts, establishing DNA capableness – and uncovering the dormant earlier clip and decay erase them.

Syrians excavation aft rumour dispersed of underground cells beneath Sednaya Prison, infamous for torture nether the toppled al-Assad authorities [File: Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency]

On the ground, the enactment has fallen mostly connected those who erstwhile pulled survivors from rubble, the White Helmets, volunteers for the Syria Civil Defence (SCD).

They photograph and document, noting fragments of individuality similar clothing, teeth, bones. Each acceptable of remains is boxed and sent to an recognition centre. There, the process stops. The boxes of bones enactment sealed. According to the White Helmets, nary household has been reunited with the remains of the disappeared.

Officials and humanitarian workers accidental that without DNA laboratories, forensic specialists, oregon a functioning recognition system, the bones tin lone beryllium stored, adjacent erstwhile families are definite they cognize who they are.

On November 5, the National Commission for the Missing signed a practice statement with the International Commission connected Missing Persons (ICMP), the Independent Institution connected Missing Persons successful Syria (IIMP), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Officials accidental these institutions volition analyse past crimes, physique a nationalist database of the missing, enactment families, and, eventually, place and instrumentality remains.

The practice statement was billed arsenic the commencement of a broad nationalist process for information and justice, committing each parties to stock expertise and assistance physique the backbone of an recognition system.

The task is vast. There are nary reliable authoritative figures; estimates of the disappeared scope from 120,000 to 300,000 people, numbers compiled from assorted sources without a unified database.

Before anyone tin beryllium identified, the authorities indispensable stitchery what already exists – detention registers, civilian documents, subject files, and lists held by absorption groups and by subsister associations similar the Caesar Families, Families for Freedom and the Sednaya Association.

Then they indispensable cod testimonies from survivors and families, and coax accusation from erstwhile officials and guards who whitethorn cognize wherever radical were taken oregon buried. All this indispensable beryllium uploaded into a cardinal database that has not yet been built.

“You cannot commencement instantly searching, looking for answers,” says Zeina Shahla, a subordinate of the government’s National Commission for the Missing. “You request to acceptable up the ground.”

Right now, Syria has lone a azygous recognition centre successful Damascus, acceptable up with the ICRC, but nary dedicated DNA laboratory. Offices successful different cities are promised, but not yet open.

“We person immense needs – method needs, fiscal needs, quality resources,” Shahla says.

“Most of them are not disposable successful Syria, particularly the … technological resources. We don't person DNA labs. We don't person the forensic labs. We don't person the doctors. So we request a batch of resources.

“And of course, this combat is excessively analyzable due to the fact that it's affecting millions of people. We request to enactment fast, but astatine the aforesaid time, we cannot enactment fast.”

Ibtissam al-Nadaf, who said she is inactive mourning 2 sons, 1 killed by a sniper during the siege of al-Assali, the different disappeared into Sednaya Prison successful 2018, holds her sons' photos astatine Marjeh Square successful Damascus, Syria [File: Reuters/Zohra Bensemra]

The officials constituent to the standard of the wreckage. Thirteen years of war, hundreds of thousands missing, institutions hollowed retired by sanctions.

Many person not adjacent reported their missing, inactive acrophobic of what doing truthful mightiness invite. Around 1 successful 5 Syrians present lives abroad, scattering the notation samples needed to lucifer the dormant to the living.

Some families of the disappeared consciousness they are astatine the bottommost of the state’s database of priorities. Others, similar the Caesar Families Association, recognize this process takes time.

Even if each committedness is kept, the travel from a signed memorandum successful Damascus to a named sedate whitethorn instrumentality decades. Many of the families waiting crossed Syria whitethorn not unrecorded to spot the time their children are returned to them.