It has been 10 years since Morhaf Safi, a younger Syrian man, left residence to purchase a swimsuit for his wedding ceremony and by no means got here again.

Ten years since his household within the capital, Damascus, have had any contact with him. Ten years since his older brother, Abdulsafer, 38, final noticed his face.

Then on Tuesday, simply days after the gorgeous overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime, a pal texted Abdulsafer a photograph of a mutilated physique: a face slashed, mouth twisted, eyes hole and bruised.

“My pal requested if this was my brother,” Abdulsafer says by means of tears, clutching the photograph on his telephone. It was taken inside Harasta, a navy hospital within the capital. “We expect he died just some days earlier than the regime’s collapse.”

Abdulsafer was instructed that at the very least 35 our bodies, all displaying indicators of torture, had been present in a refrigerated room contained in the hospital – together with, presumably, that of his beloved brother.

Rebels instructed reporters that they had acquired a tip from hospital workers about corpses being dumped there, and had subsequently moved the our bodies to central Damascus for households to establish.

Outdoors the morgue, photographs of the disfigured our bodies are plastered on the partitions, and determined households scour them at nighttime utilizing the lights on their cell phones.

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Among the many photographs, pals establish what they consider to be the physique of Mazen al-Hamada, considered one of Syria’s most outstanding activists, who grew to become a world voice in opposition to the Assad regime’s use of torture after he endured a 12 months of brutal bodily, sexual, and psychological abuse in Sednaya.

Launched in 2013, and after taking refuge within the Netherlands, he shared his harrowing story with the world. For some inexplicable motive, he determined to return to Damascus in early 2020. He hasn’t been heard from since.

Contained in the morgue, folks transfer from physique to physique, inspecting stays that litter the ground in varied levels of decay. Scribbled on among the blood-smeared physique baggage are notes about the place the our bodies had been discovered and in what circumstances.

“To at the present time, we don’t know why my brother was imprisoned,” Abdulsafer says as he braces himself to have a look inside. “We knew he was being held within the Political Safety Department, however then he was transferred to a different jail and we misplaced all contact with him.”

Behind him, a girl referred to as Om Hamza, who’s looking for her brother and two sons-in-law who’ve been lacking for years, says he’s not alone.

“Each family in Syria has three or 4 lacking folks,” she provides. “It’s our nightmare.”

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Determined kin have been doing no matter they’ll – tenting within the grounds of Syria’s most infamous jail, in addition to looking out the halls of overflowing hospitals and morgues – to search out those that disappeared through the reign of the now deposed autocrat.

Clutching photographs, identification playing cards, and screenshots of previous photographs, the brothers, moms and dads flock to anybody and wherever that may make clear their kin’ whereabouts.

Over half a century of brutal rule by the Assad dynasty, culminating in 13 years of civil battle, was marked by mass arrests, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and executions.

Nobody is aware of the true scale of the lacking, however the Worldwide Fee on Lacking Individuals (ICMP) estimates that there are at the very least 150,000 folks whose destiny stays unknown throughout Syria’s myriad conflicts.

Amongst them had been over 3,500 youngsters, and greater than 8,500 girls, who remained underneath arrest or forcibly disappeared by the point Assad was overthrown, in keeping with the Syrian Community for Human Rights.

The top of the rights group, Fadel Abdulghany, broke down in tears on a Turkey-based Syrian tv channel on Monday, saying they consider many of the lacking individuals are in all probability lifeless.

And so whereas some households have been reunited, the ICMP has referred to as on the worldwide group to assist discover the remainder.

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The worldwide intergovernmental organisation mentioned on Tuesday that it had already collected information from greater than 76,200 kin in Syria, who’ve formally reported almost 30,000 lacking individuals.

Now’s the time, the ICMP says, for the world to coordinate in utilizing genetic and database know-how to search out those that have disappeared.

“For justice to prevail in Syria, steps should be taken now – within the midst of current occasions – to guard proof,” the organisation added, imploring that websites of executions and different human rights violations be handled as crime scenes.

“They should be sealed and examined in the end to guard the reality and convey these accountable to justice.”

That, sadly, was not the case at Sednaya jail, the place indignant and determined households stood earlier than smashed CCTV cameras, damaged surveillance screens, and destroyed pc mainframes – all apparently sabotaged by regime guards earlier than they fled.

The remoted jail is nicknamed “slaughterhouse” and “dying camp”. Positioned 30km (19 miles) north of Damascus, it was described by Amnesty Worldwide as “the ultimate vacation spot” for peaceable protesters and military defectors.

After a video unfold throughout the nation displaying rebels storming the jail and releasing inmates on Sunday, households from throughout Syria used their final little bit of gas to drive to the infamous advanced and seek for their family members.

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With nowhere else to go, many are tenting on mattresses on the bottom exterior the grotesque advanced, which is roofed in sewage and the scant belongings of inmates. Some dig with their arms into the bottom or attempt knocking by means of partitions, looking for underground prisons and secret cells which can be rumoured to exist.

“The guards took working screens and storage drives to cowl up for Bashar al-Assad and his criminals,” says Wali Subhi Nassar from Aleppo, breaking down in tears. “A couple of month in the past, a soldier knowledgeable me that my brother was in Sednaya. Now that soldier has vanished, and all contact with him has been utterly lower off.”

As one other man tries to consolation him, Wali continues: “We’ll preserve pursuing these criminals till the very finish. I didn’t maintain hatred for them, nor have I ever carried a weapon in my life, however now I’ll hunt them down.”

Outdoors, crowds of determined households seek for clues. “Please, I’m looking for my son Enad, who disappeared 12 years in the past,” a girl sobs, grabbing my arm. One other man, Zakaria, himself a former detainee, shouts: “Seven of my household are lacking. Their photographs are within the data right here on the jail – they should be right here.”

Within the capital’s hospitals, in the meantime, households race from ward to ward, begging workers for any information of these launched from jail, chasing stories of prisoners so badly tortured that they’ve forgotten their names and misplaced their minds.

The kin of the lacking stream out of a room on the fourth ground, the place two males are being handled for gunshot and torture wounds after their launch from prisons in Homs and Damascus – solely to search out that they’ve already been claimed by their households.

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The spouse of one of many males – Alaa, a mom of six – says her husband Mohammed, 38, spent two years behind bars for attempting to flee navy conscription. There, he was tortured and finally shot within the shoulder because the regime forces fled. He was free of Sednaya on Sunday.

“They by no means let me see my husband. They used to torture me each time I requested to see him,” Alaa says tearfully, explaining how an opposition fighter had reached out to her with the information that he had been freed. “Once I heard he was launched, I began crying together with the youngsters.”

On the close by Ibn al-Nafees hospital, injured detainee Khalid, additionally free of Sednaya after two years, is being taken residence by his household. Khalid was so badly crushed and tortured, they are saying he remembers little of what occurred to him, and that he was solely situated by his kin due to an image, taken contained in the hospital ward, that was circulated on social media.

Again on the morgue, Abdulsafer finds the physique he believes to be his brother – however there’s a unusual tattoo on one arm, and the face is so disfigured he’s not certain. A DNA take a look at is required to substantiate whether or not it’s his sibling. However for now, it offers him a sliver of hope.

“I can’t be certain,” he says. “I simply hope it means there’s a small probability that he could be alive.”