Syria: Grief turns to fury as family members seek for family members tortured by Assad’s regime | EUROtoday

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Camping within the grounds of Syria’s most infamous “slaughterhouse” jail north of Damascus and scouring the halls of overflowing hospitals and morgues, determined family members seek for Syria’s lacking.

Clutching pictures, identification playing cards, and screenshots of previous photographs, households of these swallowed into the regime’s infamous jails and judicial system flock to anybody they assume would possibly make clear the whereabouts of their family members.

More than half a century of brutal rule by the Assad regime, culminating in 13 years of civil warfare, has been marked by mass arrests, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and executions leading to tens of hundreds lacking.

Many have ended up in Syria’s varied harsh and remoted prisons, like Saydnaya, nicknamed the “death camp.” Located 30 km north of the capital, Damascus, Amnesty International has described it as the ultimate vacation spot for each peaceable protesters and people defecting from the military.

After footage unfold throughout the nation displaying rebels storming the complicated and liberating inmates on Sunday, households from throughout Syria used the final of their gasoline to drive to the infamous jail looking for their family members.

With nowhere to go, many are sleeping on mattresses exterior the ugly complicated, which is affected by sewage and the scant belongings of inmates. Some are digging with their fingers or attempting to knock via partitions, chasing rumours of underground prisons and secret cells.

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“Please, I am trying to find my son Enad, who disappeared 12 years ago,” a lady sobs, grabbing my arm. Another man, Zakaria, himself an ex-detainee, shouts: “Seven of my family are missing. Their photos are in the records here at the prison. They must be here.”

A person standing behind, holding a wad of jail papers with names written on them, says he can’t discover his brother-in-law, who disappeared after attending a protest within the southern province of Daraa in 2011. His good friend, attempting to make sense of what appears like a map of the jail grounds, says he misplaced his personal brother in Daraa three years later; he had gone out to purchase a gasoline canister and by no means returned.

The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) mentioned that no less than 150,000 persons are believed to be lacking on account of battle in Syria, and that already, households have been reunited after the beautiful overthrow of Bashar al-Assad over the weekend.

The world intergovernmental organisation has already collected information from greater than 76,200 family members of lacking individuals, who’ve reported 28,200 instances and acquired stories of 66 mass grave websites .

Now is the time, the group says, for the world to coordinate its genetic and database know-how to seek out Syria’s lacking.

“For justice to prevail in Syria, steps must be taken now—in the midst of present events—to protect evidence,” they added, imploring that locations the place executions and different human rights violations occurred be handled as crime scenes. “They must be sealed and, in due course, examined to protect the truth and bring those responsible for crimes to justice.”

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Unfortunately, that was not the case at Saydnaya, the place offended and determined households stood surrounded by smashed CCTV cameras, surveillance screens, and mutilated laptop mainframes and exhausting drives.

“They took 40 working screens and the storage drives only to cover up for Bashar al-Assad and his criminals,” says Wali Subhi Nassar from Aleppo, crying tears of frustration.

“About a month ago, a soldier informed me that my brother was in Saydnaya. Now, that soldier has vanished, and all contact with him has been completely cut off.

“We will keep pursuing these criminals until the very end. I didn’t hold hatred for them, nor have I ever carried a weapon in my life, but now I will hunt them down,” he says as one other man tries to consolation him.

Families who’ve given up on the jail flood the close by hospitals like Al-Mouwasat for clues about their lacking family members. Hearing stories of prisoners so badly tortured they’ve forgotten their names and misplaced their minds, they run between rooms of injured folks, begging nurses and medics for information of any of these launched from jail. They stream out of a room on the fourth ground, the place two males are being handled for gunshot and torture wounds after being free of prisons in Homs and Damascus—solely to seek out they’ve already been claimed by their households.

Alaa, a mom of six, is among the fortunate few: she nurses her husband, Muhammed, 38, one of many two males had simply been free of Saydnaya on Sunday who lies unconscious subsequent to her.

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The household had initially fled to Lebanon however returned to Syria in 2014 as a result of they’d no cash, meals or education for his or her kids. Her husband was instantly conscripted into al-Assad’s military however tried to abandon a number of instances. Eight months in the past, he was ultimately transferred to Saydnaya.

There, Alaa says, he was badly tortured and ultimately shot within the shoulder because the regime retreated.

“They never let me see my husband. They used to torture me every time I asked to see him,” she says in tears. “When I heard he was released, I started crying, along with the children. My children were crying and happy that their father had been released.”