Months after Assad’s fall, families of missing still seeking justice

A burly, bearded man in a blue jacket moved quickly through grassy debris on a windswept road in the Damascus countryside, collecting bones with his bare hands.

He added a jaw to the pile, before gently picking up a skull. In short, before her – a moment of tenderness for one of Bashar al-Assad’s many victims. Ten months after Assad was ousted from power last December, in a lightning advance by the rebels, mass graves are still being discovered.

The legacy of the Syrian dictator is rooted in the soil here – skeletal remains where crops should be. There are now over 60 grave sites and counting.

The latest is what happened in the village of Al-Otaiba in Eastern Ghouta, where a sheep shepherd found clothes and human remains after burning straw.

Authorities believe up to 175 bodies have been bulldozed into a mass grave in the former opposition stronghold.

They are among the legions of missing people.

More than 181,000 people were subjected to enforced disappearance or arbitrary detention during the 14 years of civil war in Syria, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. It says that the Assad regime seized 90% of it.

Families of the missing are now demanding answers and justice from the new Syria – which held the first parliamentary elections of its kind earlier this month.

The People’s Assembly was chosen but not directly by the people. A third of the seats still need to be filled. The appointees will be chosen by interim Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa.

Depending on your perspective on this torn country, and perhaps on your religion or sect, the elections were either a sham or a first step on the road to democracy.

As Syria looks forward, President Al-Sharaa – a jihadi fighter turned head of state – says the missing will remain a “national priority.”

Relatives of the bereaved, such as Qasim Hamami, depend on this. There is little they can do.

We found him digging on the side of the road at the mass grave site, extracting secrets from the soil.

As we watched, he unveiled a worn-out jacket, brown and covered in dirt. This was the last trace of his brother Samer, who disappeared when he was twenty-one years old.

Qasim said calmly: “Samer was a civilian, and newly married only 15 days after his marriage. He had no connection to armed groups. He did not fight anyone.”

“Ghouta was under siege. The regime did not allow any food in. He left because of hunger.”

Qassem’s three nephews also left with Samer and shared his fate.

They were among about 400 people who set off from Eastern Ghouta on February 27, 2014, hoping to reach another rebel stronghold. On the way, they were attacked by the regime and its allies in Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia.

We know this because they filmed the massacre and released the footage. The video, which has spread widely online, is difficult to watch.

It shows a line of people walking along the road, straight towards the ambush.

Landmines are detonated along a 300 m (985 ft) stretch. The explosions are followed by a hail of bullets.

Most of the convoy was men, but it included women and children, according to Muhammad Omar Hajjar, the newly appointed public prosecutor in the Damascus countryside. They are believed to be civilians. The regime claimed at the time that the dead were fighters.

We met a survivor who gave us a first-hand account of the attack.

Bilal, a nurse, returns to the site of the mass grave, glancing out at the sunlit landscape, reliving his darkest night.

“We left around midnight,” he told us. “I walked behind my colleague, and the distance between me and my colleague was 30 meters. After the mines exploded, the wounded were screaming. They killed them in cold blood. I could hear two voices, and I could not help.”

Bilal says he survived by hiding in the bush until the next day, and now he speaks out loud to those who can’t.

“I lost my nephew, my friends and my relatives. Those who set up the ambush must be held accountable,” he said.

Will that happen?

Many prominent figures from the previous regime are on the run, and Hezbollah has been devastated by Israeli attacks and the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2024.

A Syrian judge issued an arrest warrant in absentia for Bashar al-Assad in connection with other murders. But the former president found refuge in Russia, which supported him during the civil war.

It is not known whether his fate was discussed when President Al-Shara held talks with President Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, with the former enemies shaking hands in the Kremlin and discussing how to strengthen ties. If the lion was watching, it wouldn’t be easy to watch.

Back home, there is one major change for the families it has devastated. They can now share their suffering without risking their lives.

About an hour’s drive from the mass grave, we joined a gathering of wives, mothers and daughters of the missing.

They met at the “Truth Tent” – a community-led forum where Syrians revealed the horrors of the past. In this case the “tent” was the village hall.

More than a hundred women gathered – many of whom did not have enough seats – many wearing black abayas and hijabs.

They gathered around us, holding pictures of husbands, fathers or sons – men who might now live only in their memory. More pictures were hung in rows on the wall.

One woman stopped in front of the screen and raised her hand to caress the image.

A softly spoken 18-year-old named Bisan recalls how her father was taken away at gunpoint when she was just four years old.

“They grabbed my father, handcuffed him, and put him in the truck,” she said. “He asked them why he was arrested. One of them pointed a gun at his head. We were very afraid. We couldn’t do anything at that time. I was young and my mother was crying.”

Her cousin stood next to her as she spoke. Her father was also taken.

Across the room, voices rose and fell in a chorus of harrowing accounts of loved ones snatched from work or home and swallowed up by the regime’s notorious prison system.

A woman shouted from the back of the hall: “The prisons are filled with the blood and souls of innocent people.” “We spent a lot…and sometimes we even sold our houses to pay dogs from the regime in exchange for information about our brothers, sons or husbands.”

Another woman described being asked to choose between freedom for her son or her husband.

She said: “They took me and my son to the security branch.” “They beat us both. They showed me my son in front of the camera and asked me if I wanted my husband or my son. I said I wanted my son.”

The authorities asked her to sign a paper saying that her husband was a terrorist, but she refused. “I never saw him carry a weapon,” she added. “He went out to demonstrate because he was hungry.”

Another veiled woman shouted, demanding: The execution of Bashar al-Assad.

“We will get our rights when he is hanged,” she said. “He is responsible for everything. When we cut off the head of the snake, we will heal and make peace with each other.”

Najwa, one of the organizers, took to the stage to urge families to be patient.

Her husband, Mohammed al-Hallaq, was kidnapped in January 2014. She obtained his death certificate later that year, but his body was never found.

Najwa said, her voice full of anger: “The son of the pig, Bashar, destroyed us for 14 years.” “The only thing I ask of you: Don’t give up, don’t stop pushing. It won’t happen overnight.”

Some wonder if it will ever happen, including a bereaved father named Mohammed, one of the few men who attended the meeting. State Security arrested his son Mazen, who worked at the electricity company, in 2013.

“All this talk will be of no use if we do not take action,” he said, his eyes filled with tears. “What we need is for the people who took our children to be brought to justice.”

There is now a National Missing Persons Commission, but it is still in its infancy and suffers from a lack of resources – including DNA testing facilities. There is only one DNA laboratory in Syria.

Ten months after Assad’s ouster, the number of missing people continues to rise.

Some families are only now beginning to come forward with accounts of their long-gone loved ones.

“We try to manage expectations,” says Zeina Shahla, UNHCR spokeswoman. “We tell the families that we are starting to work, but unfortunately it will take years. In every Syrian village, there may be missing people.”

At best, their loved ones can expect many more years of waiting for the truth, justice, or burial of the bones.

Additional reporting by Whitski Burima, Goktay Kuraltan, Lana Antaki and Arif Al-Kariz.