Surrey Police have launched interview footage with Sara Sharif’s members of the family accountable for her horrific loss of life
For years now, we have been informed of the mass detentions, disappearances and murders of anybody even remotely against the regime of Bashar al Assad.
However what we’re seeing now’s the every day proof, if it was wanted, of a marketing campaign of suppression and homicide that was performed on an industrial scale.
Jubilation that the regime has been toppled is now turning to grief because the our bodies of these killed by the hands of Assad and his henchmen are being found and slowly, very slowly, recognized.
Rising from the gloomy inside of the morgue’s fridge room at Al Mojtahed Hospital in Damascus, a physique is wheeled on a gurney in the direction of the examination space.
Assad regime falls newest: Insurgent chief speaks to Sky Information
They’re making an attempt to determine who the lifeless man is. All they know is that he has been murdered.
Throughout the capital Damascus, there is a determined seek for the lacking. There isn’t any authority right here, so members of the family are looking by means of the morgues themselves.
We watch as they open physique baggage to take footage of the victims – making an attempt to work out if they’re family members.
Beside them the fridge door has been opened, and stacked inside are over 30 folks, assigned a quantity, zipped up in physique baggage.
The identification mark of the unclaimed lifeless is displayed on the bag. They’re the unknown victims of this regime.
Close by, members of the family pull open silver refrigerated lockers searching for our bodies, earlier than hospital employees yell at them to clear the room.
They’re praying they are going to at the least discover who they’ve misplaced, and maybe, discover closure eventually.
As folks submit footage of the our bodies on social media, information spreads and extra members of the family arrive.
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When the our bodies are recognized, the households can take them away. We movie as a white physique bag is positioned on the knees of members of the family ready at the back of their automotive.
The scenes we witness are completely chaotic. Folks listed below are determined for completely any information.
Folks push and shove their method by means of the hospital entrance, struggling to get inside to catch a glimpse of the lifeless. It’s, merely put, determined stuff.
‘They’re hindering the group’s work’
Forensic specialists work to determine the our bodies, however it’s tough for them making an attempt to work amid this mayhem.
“Simply yesterday, we obtained a complete of 35 our bodies, transferred from Harasta Hospital, it’s mentioned they have been detainees from Sednaya Jail,” Dr Mohamad Jafran tells me.
“They arrived within the night, have been examined, numbered, photographed, and the images have been despatched to the households for identification and recognition procedures.
“The issue we’re going through is the interference from the households, as they’re hindering the medical group’s work,” he continues.
He and his put on white hazmat fits, masks, and gloves as they transfer our bodies right into a room for additional examination.
For some right here, it is the information they needed however dreaded listening to – they needed to know what occurred.
‘Tyrants with no honour’
The prolonged household of Mazen al Hamada collect in grief, quietly sobbing in a nook of the hospital complicated.
Mazen was a outstanding and even well-known anti-regime activist who they are saying had escaped to Germany, earlier than being persuaded to return by the Syrian authorities with an amnesty.
Mazen was arrested and, as they’ve simply been informed, murdered in captivity.
“A gang introduced him underneath the pretext of reconciliation, saying they would not do him any hurt, and it was all lies. They handed him over to the regime,” his sister Iman Bseis Hommada informed me.
“What can I say? Criminals, battle criminals, tyrants with no faith, honour, morals, or conscience, who do not belong to humanity… What can I say?”
With so many lifeless, and so many lacking, looking for and determine everybody will probably be a Herculean process.
A lady comes as much as me and begins unzipping her purse, she pulls out an image: “My son, my son,” she says to me, “I have not seen him for 12 years”.
“Nothing, no telephone name.”
For households like her, the search has turn into a full-time preoccupation.
The detention and homicide of anybody even against the Assad regime seems to have been performed till the very finish.
Hurriedly rushed to a ready automotive by his household, the physique of Ahmed al Khatib. His household says he was arrested 24 hours earlier than the regime fell.
He was one of many final to die. There have been a whole bunch of 1000’s earlier than him.
He’s one of the vital adopted artists on Instagram and is in demand from pop megastars to luxurious manufacturers and at this time marks the opening of his greatest UK present in 15 years
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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 relations seek for Syria’s lacking.
Clutching photographs, identification playing cards, and screenshots of outdated photos, 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.
Greater than half a century of brutal rule by the Assad regime, culminating in 13 years of civil battle, 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 “demise camp.” Positioned 30 km north of the capital, Damascus, Amnesty Worldwide 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 advanced and liberating inmates on Sunday, households from throughout Syria used the final of their gas to drive to the infamous jail in the hunt for their family members.
With nowhere to go, many are sleeping on mattresses exterior the ugly advanced, which is plagued by sewage and the scant belongings of inmates. Some are digging with their arms or making an attempt to knock via partitions, chasing rumours of underground prisons and secret cells.
“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 an ex-detainee, shouts: “Seven of my household are lacking. Their photographs are within the data right here on the jail. They have to be right 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 buddy, making an attempt 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 fuel canister and by no means returned.
The Worldwide Fee on Lacking Individuals (ICMP) stated that not less than 150,000 individuals are believed to be lacking as a result of battle in Syria, and that already, households have been reunited after the beautiful overthrow of Bashar al-Assad over the weekend.
The worldwide intergovernmental organisation has already collected knowledge from greater than 76,200 relations of lacking individuals, who’ve reported 28,200 instances and obtained reviews of 66 mass grave websites .
Now’s the time, the group says, for the world to coordinate its genetic and database expertise to search out Syria’s lacking.
“For justice to prevail in Syria, steps have to be taken now—within the midst of current occasions—to guard proof,” they added, imploring that locations the place executions and different human rights violations occurred be handled as crime scenes. “They have to be sealed and, sooner or later, examined to guard the reality and produce these chargeable for crimes to justice.”
Sadly, 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 arduous drives.
“They took 40 working screens and the storage drives solely to cowl up for Bashar al-Assad and his criminals,” says Wali Subhi Nassar from Aleppo, crying tears of frustration.
“A couple of month in the past, a soldier knowledgeable me that my brother was in Saydnaya. Now, that soldier has vanished, and all contact with him has been utterly reduce off.
“We’ll maintain 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,” he says as one other man tries to consolation him.
Households who’ve given up on the jail flood the close by hospitals like Al-Mouwasat for clues about their lacking relations. Listening to reviews 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 flooring, the place two males are being handled for gunshot and torture wounds after being free of prisons in Homs and Damascus—solely to search out they’ve already been claimed by their households.
Alaa, a mom of six, is likely one of 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.
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 youngsters. 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 finally transferred to Saydnaya.
There, Alaa says, he was badly tortured and finally shot within the shoulder because the regime retreated.
“They by no means let me see my husband. They used to torture me each time I requested to see him,” she says in tears. “Once I heard he was launched, I began crying, together with the kids. My youngsters had been crying and comfortable that their father had been launched.”
Households desperately scoured the filthy cells of Syria’s Saydnaya jail on Monday (9 December) for any signal of their long-detained family members after its gates have been flung open by rebels following the downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Hundreds of prisoners spilled out of Assad’s detention system after he was toppled on Sunday.
There have been tearful reunions with relations who believed their relations had been executed years earlier.
Nevertheless, different households have been trawling darkish corridors and hidden cells within the complicated for a hint of these detained for attending protests, defying authorities or voicing discontent.
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They got here from throughout Syria, tens of 1000’s. The primary place they rushed to after the autumn of their longtime tormentor, former President Bashar Assad, was right here: Saydnaya Jail, a spot so infamous for its horrors it was lengthy generally known as “the slaughterhouse.”
For the previous two days, all have been searching for indicators of family members who disappeared years and even a long time in the past into the secretive, sprawling jail simply exterior Damascus.
However hope gave method to despair Monday. Individuals opened the heavy iron doorways lining the hallways to seek out cells inside empty. With sledgehammers, shovels and drills, males pounded holes in flooring and partitions, searching for what they believed had been secret dungeons, or chasing sounds they thought they heard from underground. They discovered nothing.
Insurgents freed dozens of individuals from the Saydnaya navy jail on Sunday when Damascus fell. Since then, virtually nobody has been discovered.
“The place is everybody? The place are everybody’s youngsters? The place are they?” stated Ghada Assad, breaking down in tears.
She had rushed from her Damascus residence to the jail on the capital’s outskirts, hoping to seek out her brother. He was detained in 2011, the 12 months that protests first erupted towards the previous president’s rule – earlier than they became a protracted, grueling civil warfare. She didn’t know why he was arrested.
“My coronary heart has been burned over my brother. For 13 years, I saved searching for him,” she stated. When insurgents final week seized Aleppo — her authentic hometown — initially of their swiftly victorious offensive, “I prayed that they’d attain Damascus simply to allow them to open up this jail,” she stated.
Civil protection officers serving to within the search had been as confused because the households over why no additional inmates had been being discovered. It appeared fewer had been held right here in current weeks, they stated.
However few had been giving up, an indication of how powerfully Saydnaya looms within the minds of Syrians as the guts of Assad’s brutal police state. The sense of loss over the lacking — and the sudden hope they may be discovered — introduced a sort of darkish unity amongst Syrians from throughout the nation.
Throughout Assad’s rule and significantly after the 2011 protests started, any trace of dissent might land somebody in Saydnaya. Few ever emerged.
In 2017, Amnesty Worldwide estimated that 10,000-20,000 folks had been being held there on the time “from each sector of society.” It stated they had been successfully slated for “extermination.”
Hundreds had been killed in frequent mass executions, Amnesty reported, citing testimony from freed prisoners and jail officers. Prisoners had been subjected to fixed torture, intense beatings and rape. Virtually day by day, guards did rounds of the cells to gather our bodies of inmates who had died in a single day from accidents, illness or hunger. Some inmates fell into psychosis and starved themselves, the human rights group stated.
“There’s not a house, there may be not a girl in Syria who didn’t lose a brother, a toddler or a husband,” stated Khairiya Ismail, 54. Two of her sons had been detained within the early days of the protests towards Assad – one in every of them when he came visiting her after she herself had been detained.
Ismail, accused of serving to her son evade navy service, spent eight months in Adra jail, northeast of Damascus. “They detained everybody.”
An estimated 150,000 folks had been detained or went lacking in Syria since 2011 — and tens of 1000’s of them are believed to have gone via Saydnaya.
“Individuals anticipated many extra to be right here … They’re clinging to the slightest sliver of hope,” stated Ghayath Abu al-Dahab, a spokesman for the White Helmets, the search and rescue group that operated in rebel-held areas all through the warfare.
5 White Helmet groups, with two canine groups, got here to Saydnaya to assist the search. They even introduced within the jail electrician, who had the ground plan, and went via each shaft, vent and sewage opening. To date, there have been no solutions, Abu al-Dahab stated.
He stated the civil protection had paperwork exhibiting greater than 3,500 folks had been in Saydnaya till three months earlier than the autumn of Damascus. However the quantity could have been much less by the point the jail was stormed, he stated.
“There are different prisons,” he stated. “The regime had turned all of Syria into an enormous jail.” Detainees had been held in safety companies, navy amenities, authorities places of work and even universities, he added.
Across the Y-shaped important constructing of the jail, everybody saved attempting, satisfied they might discover some hidden chamber with detainees, useless or alive.
Dozens of males tried to pressure a steel gate open till they realized it led solely to extra cells upstairs. Others requested the insurgents guarding the jail to make use of their rifle to lever open a closed door.
A handful of males had been gathered, excavating what seemed like a sewage opening in a basement. Others dug up electrical wiring, considering it would result in hidden underground chambers.
In a scene all through the day, tons of cheered as males with sledgehammers and shovels battered an enormous column within the constructing’s atrium, considering they’d discovered a secret cell. Lots of ran to see. However there was nothing, and tears and loud sighs changed the celebrations.
Within the wards, strains of cells had been empty. Some had blankets, just a few plastic pots or just a few names scribbled on partitions. Paperwork, some with names of prisoners, had been left strewn within the yard, the kitchen and elsewhere. Households scoured them for his or her family members’ names.
A short protest broke out within the jail yard, when a bunch of males started chanting: “Convey us the jail warden.” Calls on social media urged anybody with info of the key cells of the jail to return forth and assist.
Firas al-Halabi, one of many prisoners freed when insurgents first broke into Saydnaya, was again on Monday visiting. These looking flocked round him, whispering names of kinfolk to see if he met them.
Al-Halabi, who had been a military conscript when he was arrested, stated he spent 4 years in a cell with 20 others.
His solely meals was 1 / 4 loaf of bread and a few burghul. He suffered from tuberculosis due to the cell situations. He was tortured by electrocution, he stated, and the beatings had been fixed.
“Throughout our time within the yard, there was beating. When going to the toilet, there was beating. If we sat on the ground, we obtained crushed. In the event you take a look at the sunshine, you’re crushed,” he stated. He was as soon as thrown into solitary for merely praying in his cell.
“All the pieces is taken into account a violation,” he stated. “Your life is one large violation to them.”
He stated that in his first 12 months within the jail guards would name out tons of of names over the course of days. One officer informed him it was for executions.
When he was freed Sunday, he thought he was dreaming. “We by no means thought we might see this second. We thought we might be executed, one after the other.”
Noha Qweidar and her cousin sat within the yard on Monday, taking a relaxation from looking. Their husbands had been detained in 2013 and 2015. Qweidar stated she had acquired phrase from different inmates that her husband was killed in a abstract execution in jail.
However she couldn’t know for positive. Prisoners reported useless previously have turned up alive.
“I heard that (he was executed) however I nonetheless have hope he’s alive.”
Simply earlier than sunset on Monday, rescue groups introduced in an excavator to dig deeper.
However late at evening, the White Helmets introduced the top of their search, saying in a press release they’d discovered no hidden areas within the facility.
“We share the profound disappointment of the households of the 1000’s who stay lacking and whose fates are unknown.”
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Households of these imprisoned by Bashar al-Assad‘s brutal regime desperately searched the filthy cells of Syria‘s most infamous jail for any indicators of their family members because the nation involves phrases with the toppling of his rule.
Within the Sednaya jail, referred to by rights teams as a “human slaughterhouse”, hundreds of individuals are believed to have been detained, tortured or executed throughout Syria’s civil struggle which started in 2011. Sitting simply north of Damascus, it grew to become the main focus for a whole lot of households demanding solutions about what occurred to their kinfolk.
It comes as Israel, US and Turkey additionally launched airstrikes in opposition to websites throughout the nation to guard their pursuits after rebels, led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) pressured Assad to flee, whereas the deposed Syrian president’s former backers Russia and Iran additionally suggesting they’d attain out to the rebels – with Moscow cautious of the destiny of its navy bases within the nation.
On the jail, numerous households had been trawling darkish corridors and hidden cells within the labyrinthine complicated for a hint of family members detained for attending protests, defying authorities or just voicing discontent.
Ahmed Najjar had come to Damascus from Aleppo, hoping to seek out his brother’s two kids, seized by Assad’s safety forces in 2012. “We’re trying. They’re saying there’s an underground jail,” he stated.
Within the wake of hundreds spilling out of the jail having been freed on Sunday rumours had unfold that that hundreds extra inmates had been nonetheless imprisoned in underground cells that would not be reached. The White Helmets rescue organisation, which for years has dug via fallen buildings after air strikes, deployed a workforce however on Monday afternoon they stated that they had but to discover a signal of such cells. A number of occasions, a breakthrough revealed a hidden hallway, prompting bursts of gunfire from rebels to alert the hundreds ready. Cries would go up from the gang, similar to “My son, I am coming, I am coming” or “God, please do not disappoint me”.
The scenes round Sednaya had been an indication of the difficulties the nation must choosing itself up after a long time of rule by the Assad household, whereas the remainder of the world tries to rapidly work out the way to take care of the Islamist-led rebels that now management the capital, with fears of an influence vacuum in a area that’s already going through struggle in Gaza and a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel, concerned in these conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, has seized management of a beforehand demilitarised buffer zone in Syrian-controlled territory within the Golan Heights and attacked what it stated had been Assad regime weapons depots with airstrikes.
Gideon Saar, the Israeli international minister, stated the strikes had been to cease arms falling into the palms of these would search to hurt Israel. “That’s why we attacked strategic weapons techniques, for instance, remaining chemical weapons, or long-range missiles and rockets in order that they won’t fall within the palms of extremists,” he stated. The US has struck targets related to Isis in central Syria, whereas Turkey has focused Washington-backed Kurdish forces.
The UK’s international secretary, David Lammy, known as Assad – who the Kremlin stated has been given asylum in Russia – a “monster” with “the blood of numerous innocents on his palms” and that his defeat was additionally a “humiliation” for Moscow and Tehran.
“Assad is the rat of Damascus, fleeing to Moscow along with his tail between his legs. How becoming he ought to find yourself there,” Mr Lammy stated.
However Mr Lammy stated that the downfall of Assad brings “no assure of peace” and nations have been cautious about HTS and its chief often called Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who now desires to make use of his formal identify Ahmad al-Sharaa, on condition that HTS started as an offshoot of al-Qaeda. HTS minimize ties with the jihadists years in the past and has sought to undertaking a extra average picture. Mr Lammy stated that HTS remains to be a proscribed terrorists organisation within the UK and the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, stated no determination on eradicating HTS from that record is pending “in any respect… it’s far too early”.
Mr Lammy stated: “We’ll decide HTS by their actions, monitoring intently how they and different events to this battle deal with all civilians in areas they management”. The international secretary added that the group has “supplied assurances” to minorities in Syria to this point and dedicated to co-operate with the worldwide neighborhood on monitoring chemical weapons.
On Monday, the gathering of insurgent teams led by HTS introduced that they may grant amnesty to all these conscripted into Assad’s military, whereas insurgent command additionally urged they’d not inform girls the way to costume. “It’s strictly forbidden to intrude with girls’s costume or impose any request associated to their clothes or look, together with requests for modesty,” the command stated. in an announcement.
Assad’s prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, informed Al Arabiya TV he had agreed at hand energy to the rebels, qith Al Jazeera tv reported the transitional authority can be headed by Mohamed al-Bashir.
Worldwide leaders have stated it’s a second of hope for Syria and this was mirrored on the bottom. Fares Wati, in Idlib, northwestern Syria, stated: “As Syrians, at the present time is a historic turning level for us. Throughout your entire nation, in cities and villages alike, Syria is experiencing an amazing pleasure it hasn’t identified for many years. At the moment, the Syrian individuals have freed themselves from the grip of Assad’s rule, which for therefore lengthy turned the nation into his private fiefdom.”
He added: “These historic moments restore hope to the Syrian individuals and open a brand new chapter of dignity and freedom. The enjoyment we witness in the present day is a testomony to the resilience and dedication of the Syrian individuals, who by no means misplaced hope for a greater future.”
Ibrahim Olabi, a local of Aleppo who has household there and is on the board of the Syrian British Consortium, stated that the worldwide neighborhood now must step up: “We’d like some involvement and assist for Syrians to rebuild their nation”.
Syrians in neighbouring nations similar to Turkey, the place thousands and thousands fled the civil struggle, have been lining up on the border to return. Turkey is opening its Yayladagi border gate to handle the secure and voluntary return of Syrian migrants it hosts, President Tayyip Erdogan stated on Monday.
The UK additionally introduced it had paused choices on asylum functions from Syrians. 1000’s of Syrians have been granted asylum within the UK, however the House Workplace stated choices on functions would now be paused whereas occasions unfold in Damascus. The UK adopted international locations together with Germany, Austria and Sweden in suspending choices on Syrian instances. Syrians generated the fifth largest quantity of asylum claims to the UK within the 12 months ending September 2024, House Workplace statistics confirmed – behind Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Bangladesh.
House Secretary Yvette Cooper stated: “We all know the scenario in Syria is shifting extraordinarily quick after the autumn of the Assad regime. We’ve seen some individuals returning to Syria. We even have a really fast-moving scenario that we have to intently monitor.
“And that’s the reason like Germany, like France and like different international locations, we now have paused asylum choices on instances from Syria whereas the House Workplace evaluations and displays the present scenario.”
Further reporting by Abdalghany al-Aryan in Aleppo
Reuters contributed to this report
