Mohammad Chaeeb spoke softly into his cellphone, telling a relative the grim information: he discovered his brother on the Al-Mujtahid Hospital morgue.
“I noticed him and mentioned my goodbyes,” he mentioned. His gaze lingered on the blackened physique of Sami Chaeeb, whose tooth had been bared and whose eye sockets had been empty. It seemed as if he had died screaming. “He doesn’t look regular. He doesn’t even have eyes.”
The lifeless man was jailed 5 months in the past, disappearing right into a darkish jail system underneath the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. His physique is only one of many present in Syrian detention centres and prisons since Assad’s authorities fell final weekend.
Close by, forensic employees labored quickly to establish the our bodies and hand them over to kin.
Yasser Qasser, a forensic assistant on the morgue, mentioned they acquired 40 our bodies that morning from the hospital, that had been being fingerprinted and having DNA samples taken.
The workers had already recognized about eight our bodies, he mentioned. “However dozens of households are arriving, and the numbers don’t match.”
Some our bodies got here from the infamous Sednaya jail, nonetheless wearing prisoner uniforms, Qasser mentioned.
His colleague, Dr Abdallah Youssef, mentioned figuring out all of them would take time.
“We perceive the struggling of the households, however we’re working underneath immense strain. The our bodies had been present in salt rooms, uncovered to excessive chilly,” he mentioned.
Morgue officers who examined the corpses have seen bullet wounds and marks that gave the impression to be the results of torture, he added.
An estimated 150,000 folks have been jailed or reported lacking in Syria since 2011 when peaceable antigovernment protests descended into warfare. Below al-Assad’s rule, any whiff of dissent may ship somebody to jail instantly. For years, it was a sentence akin to dying, as few ever emerged from the system.
Quoting testimony from freed prisoners and jail officers, Amnesty Worldwide has reported that 1000’s of Syrians had been killed in frequent mass executions.
Prisoners had been subjected to fixed torture, intense beatings and rape. Inmates ceaselessly died from accidents, illness or hunger. Some fell into psychosis and starved themselves, the human rights group mentioned.
Among the many our bodies on the morgue on Wednesday was Mazen al-Hamada, a Syrian activist who fled to Europe however returned to Syria in 2020 and was imprisoned upon arrival. His mangled corpse was discovered wrapped in a bloody sheet in Sednaya.
Hilala Meryeh, a 64-year-old Palestinian mom of 4, stood within the dingy identification room, baggage of our bodies throughout her. She had simply discovered one in all her sons.
Her 4 boys had been arrested by the previous Syrian regime in 2013 throughout a crackdown on the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. She nonetheless wanted to seek out three.
“I don’t know the place they’re,” she mentioned. “Give me my youngsters, seek for my youngsters!”
Different Syrians, like Imad Habbal, stood immobile within the morgue, coming to grips with the fact and injustice of their loss.
Habbal gazed on the physique of his brother, Diaa Habbal.
“We got here yesterday, and we discovered him lifeless,” he mentioned. “They killed him. Why? What was his crime? What did he ever do to them? Simply because he got here again to his nation?”
Diaa Habbal, a Syrian who had been dwelling in Saudi Arabia since 2003, returned to Damascus in mid-2024 to go to his household, his brother mentioned. He was arrested by the Syrian navy police six months in the past on expenses of evading navy service.
With trembling palms, Imad Habbal lifted the masking, his voice breaking as he wept and spoke to his brother.
“I instructed you to not come,” he mentioned. “I want you didn’t come.”
