DAMASCUS, Syria — Corpse No. 11 was relatively pristine, with few signs of abuse save for a rictus of pained surprise. No. 26 was in worse condition, the decomposition further along but still not enough to obscure the scarlet bruising on the shriveling skin of his forehead. The face of No. 18 was also bruised but surprisingly intact otherwise; the mouth was open, as if he were in midsentence.
Pacing the pastel-green basement morgue of Damascus’ Mujtahed Hospital was Sabri Riyabi, a 32-year-old man from the suburb of Jobar, looking among the unidentified dead for Mohammad, the brother he last saw in 2011.
He lifted the collar of his sweatshirt to cover his nose, then lingered over each of the six corpses with his phone flashlight.
None were Mohammad.
He asked a staff member whether those were all the bodies in the hospital that day.
“Don’t bother going to the other room — everyone there has been claimed,” the attendant said.
Riyabi sighed.
“It’s my second day searching. I’ve gone to all the hospitals here in Damascus. So far nothing,” he said. “My parents don’t dare to come. They don’t want to go through this.”
Wars are often reduced to statistics: of people killed or wounded, of areas destroyed, of the cost to rebuild. Yet perhaps the most lingering expression of the tragedy in Syria’s 13-year civil war is in the missing, and the anguished search for the estimated 150,000 people who disappeared in the conflict — most of them at the hands of then-President Bashar Assad’s security services.
As the rebels blitzed through major cities last week amid a wholesale collapse of the Syrian army, they threw open prison doors, setting off scenes of elation as thousands of detainees gained their freedom.
Syria now searches for a new identity, as Damascus residents face a future without President Bashar Assad.
But for the families of the missing, it’s been a different story. In the five days since Assad’s fall, people from all over Syria have converged on the capital, scouring hospital morgues and the facilities of a prison system notorious for its cruelty.
One of its victims was Riyabi’s brother, an army soldier accused of collaborating with the opposition. He was imprisoned but the family was never told where he was.
Also wading through the bureaucratic labyrinth was Dalal Al-Sumah. Her 16-year-old son, Ahmad, was picked up in 2012 in Sahnaya, a town southwest of Damascus that had joined in the anti-Assad protests a year earlier.
For years she searched, bribing whatever authority figure she could find just to find out where Ahmad was being held. One person told her he was in the detention center for Air Force Intelligence, among the most brutal of Assad’s security services. But when she got permission from the Justice Ministry to visit, the guards at the gate told her Ahmad wasn’t there.
Two bribes and two fruitless visits later, she was told he was in Sednaya, described by rights groups as “a human slaughterhouse.” Again, the guards denied Ahmad was an inmate, but this time they warned her to not ask again.
“He wasn’t involved in anything. He lived in his grandmother’s house and worked as a bricklayer,” Al-Sumah insisted. “Why did they take him?”
For many, the journey into Assad’s gulags began in detention facilities attached to military intelligence branches; many of their headquarters are within the so-called Security Quarter of Damascus’ Kafr Sousa neighborhood, each equipped with prison cells and interrogation chambers.
A summons to the neighborhood was a nightmare scenario for Syrians. Now, bearded militants stand at the reinforced metal barrier at the quarter’s entrance, barely able to hold back the stream of people hoping to find any information about their loved ones. On the night of the government’s collapse, residents ransacked the buildings, leaving behind tattered uniforms, spent .50-caliber ammunition rounds, boxes of rocket-propelled grenades and burnt vehicles before the rebels were able to restore order.
One of those rebels, a 39-year-old who gave his name as Abu Ahmad, walked through Branch 215, which specialized in raids and was nicknamed “the Branch of Death” by inmates. It first gained infamy after a defector under the pseudonym of Caesar released tens of thousands of photos in 2014 of deceased prisoners who had been tortured in its dungeons.
Abu Ahmad hails from a rural area near the capital (he refused to give details for security reasons, he said) and he had spent the last 12 years away from his family fighting with the opposition. Before that, he said, he had been detained for two years for Islamist leanings, bouncing among various security agencies.
He compared each agency’s treatment of prisoners like a connoisseur.
“The Air Force Intelligence folks, their hobby was to break your bones. They just had to do it. The Palestine Branch? Their aim was to humiliate you,” he said. “Each branch had its specialty.”
The Israeli military said it targeted Syrian antiaircraft batteries, missile depots, manufacturing facilities, drones, helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, hangars, radars and 15 naval vessels.
Abu Ahmad stopped at the solitary ward. Each cell had a slanted ceiling which, at its apex, was 6 feet high. The bathroom was a metal-lined hole taking up part of the floor, which was 6 feet by 4 feet. Food could be pushed in through a metal slide at the bottom of the door, with another sliding window at face level.
Down the corridor were some of the larger cells, still lined with discarded uniforms and drab-gray blankets donated by the United Nations. Though the space was small, more than a dozen would have been placed in a cell, Abu Ahmad said.
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1. A set of keys to the jail cells inside the notorious military detention center “215,” in Damascus. 2. A jail cell inside the notorious military detention center “215,” in Damascus. (Ayman Oghanna/Ayman Oghanna/For The Times) 3. A jail cell inside the notorious military detention center “215,” in Damascus. (Ayman Oghanna/Ayman Oghanna/For The Times)
A makeshift laundry line hung from a vent, and graffiti adorned the walls, including slogans that read “Contentment is an everlasting treasure,” or “Release will come one day,” daubed with blood or feces. On another wall were carved prisoners’ names, birthplaces and dates of incarceration.
The security branches had their own records, notable for the meticulousness of their bookkeeping, with reams of files that were now strewn all over office floors. One was a notebook of names and associated fingerprints for when inmates first entered the prison. Many were listed as there for “terrorism,” a catchall term that included participating in anti-Assad activities. Another appeared to be an accounting of corpses of prisoners who died in custody and were being transferred to nearby military hospitals or being handed over to their families. The count exceeded 7,000.
Other files gave detailed accounts of investigations, underscoring the pervasive surveillance system Syrians lived under for decades, which included a wide network of informants keeping tabs on a target’s every move.
Prisons too had their informants, not to mention the shawish, or sergeant, who could be used by prison authorities to maintain order with the inmates. One statement is a testimonial from one prisoner complaining about a cellmate who raped him and forced him into sexual acts in front of other cellmates. Another letter, written by the warden, complains that uniforms and bedding were used for more than five years and were “no longer fit for human use” due to the high number of skin diseases.
Back at the Mujtahed morgue, mortician Mohammad Umayrah, 84, began washing the body of a victim killed in an Israeli airstrike two days ago. He dunked a washcloth and wiped the encrusted blood off the face, then wadded tissues inside the mouth and nostrils. He worked quickly with minimal fuss, wrapping the body in a plastic bag — to prevent fluids leaking out — then in three layers of white cloth.
Umayrah had retired years ago but was called in because several staff members had fled before the rebels’ advance, leaving the hospital shorthanded. He glanced at people entering the washing area looking for their loved ones, shaking his head as he watched them examine the bodies, then leave in disappointment.
He lost three sons early in the war and had no idea where they were, he said, but had no hope of identifying them.
“I’ll tell you something: After 10 years, even if I saw their bodies in front of me now, I wouldn’t be able recognize them,” he said.
He watched in silence as the family of the airstrike victim took the body away.
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