New York, Dec. 31 (SANA) A year after the collapse of ousted regime, tens of thousands of Syrian families are still searching for answers about the fate of more than 100,000 people who disappeared into the country’s security prisons during nearly 14 years of war.
Documents and Testimonies Reveal a Systematic Cover-Up
Over the past year, reporters reviewed thousands of pages of internal government documents, including memos labeled “top secret” exchanged among senior security officials. More than 50 former officials were interviewed, including interrogators, prison guards, forensic doctors, political figures, and workers involved in mass burials under the ousted regime.
Together, the documents and testimonies reveal how the ousted Assad and senior officials, particularly in the final years of the war, worked to conceal evidence of torture and deaths in detention. In the process, they erased or obscured the very information families hoped would reveal the fate of the missing.
From Denial to Erasure
As evidence of abuse mounted over the years, the deposed regime’s strategy evolved. Initially, it publicly denied allegations of torture and deaths in custody. But as international pressure intensified, denial gave way to systematic manipulation and destruction of records that could later be used for accountability.
The first major breach of secrecy came in 2014, when a Syrian military police photographer known by the code name “Caesar” smuggled out thousands of images showing more than 6,000 bodies from security facilities.
Orders to Obscure the Identities of the Dead
By 2018, the deposed regime concluded that denial alone was no longer sufficient. Documents reviewed show that security agencies were instructed to limit the traceability of detainees who died in custody.
In 2019, several agencies altered how deaths were documented. Some stopped sending identifying information with bodies transferred to military hospital morgues. Branch 248, according to two interrogators, removed its branch number entirely. The Palestine Branch went further, omitting both branch identifiers and prisoner numbers, according to interrogators and a hospital worker.
Fabricated Confessions and Backdated Files
For detainees who had died in earlier years, the deposed regime sought to retroactively justify the deaths. Ousted senior figures ordered security branches to fabricate confession statements for deceased prisoners and backdate them, according to two people familiar with the directive. Some of the falsified confessions alleged links to international terrorist organizations.
Concealing Mass Graves
The ousted regime also worked to hide physical evidence of mass deaths. Satellite imagery had revealed a mass grave near Qutayfa, north of Damascus. Beginning in 2019, the deposed regime ordered the transfer of bodies from that site to a new, secret burial location in the desert outside the capital, according to documents and interviews.
Families Left with Silence
For families of the missing, the outcome is a bitter reality. The records that once promised answers were deliberately stripped of the details that could have revealed the truth.
Efforts for Justice
On May 17 of last year, President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued two decrees establishing the National Commission for the Missing, tasked with uncovering the fate of thousands of forcibly disappeared persons, and the National Commission for Transitional Justice, concerned with revealing the truth, holding those responsible accountable, and providing reparations.
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