TPresident Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia last Sunday in the face of an unexpected rebel attack, ending his family's brutal rule over Syria for more than 50 years. The streets are buzzing with celebrations. But at the public funeral of Mazen al-Hamada, one of the most vocal survivors of torture in the regime's prison system until his disappearance in 2020, joy was replaced by sadness. An estimated 130,000 missing persons may be lost forever.
Thousands of people poured into the streets on Thursday, following Hamada's body as it was slowly driven from the hospital to the Abdulrahman Abu al-Uf Mosque for funeral prayers. Later, at a vigil in nearby Al Hijaz Square, thousands of men, women and children wept and hugged each other, many holding photos of their missing loved ones.
The initial elation of finding the missing person alive faded after rebels broke down the cell door during a surprising march into the capital. Many worried family members searched prisons and morgues and combed through looted regime documents and records, but found nothing. But even so, such public outcry would have been unthinkable less than a week ago, when Syria was still a repressive police state.
Shahed Baraki, 18, sobbed quietly as he clutched a photo of himself and his father, Osama, as children. A pediatrician, he was forcibly disappeared by soldiers at a checkpoint in 2012, at the beginning of a 13-year civil war sparked by Assad's crackdown on peaceful Arab Spring protests.
“He was picked up because he was trying to help people in the neighborhood. He was caught smuggling drugs. [The regime] Many years later he told us that he had died, but we did not retrieve his body,” Baraki said. “We still don't know what happened. He had kidney disease… We think they let him die slowly.”
Hamada has long been a symbol of the regime's crimes against its own people, testifying to politicians and audiences around the world about his detention and torture during the 2011 uprising. But in 2020, he returned from his new home in the Netherlands, shocking his family and the wider Syrian diaspora, but his brother Ameer al-Obaid, 66, believes the decision was forced. He said that he was The family believes Hamada was told that his loved ones would be killed unless he stopped exposing the regime's brutality and returned to Syria. He was detained upon arrival at Damascus airport.
The activist's fate remained unknown until Monday, but his body once again bore the marks of torture and was located in Sednaya, one of the most notorious of Assad's vast network of security forces, detention centers and prisons. The body was discovered in the morgue. Doctors who examined Hamada's body said he, like many other detainees, had recently been killed before his captors escaped.
“They killed Mazen because they knew he would expose himself again,” Obeid said.
Obaid said his final goodbyes to his brother at the Naja cemetery on the southwestern outskirts of Damascus, where dozens of mourners gathered to witness his burial. Israeli fighter jets roared so high in the air that they could not be seen during the ceremony. In the distance, the dull sound of an explosion shook the earth, and an unexplained fire blazed in the distance.
“In a way, I'm happy. Mazen went through the most brutal torture imaginable and died for us,” his brother said. “If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't be able to breathe fresh air and freedom right now.”
For most families who have lost a loved one and don't even have a body to bury, answers and closure remain out of reach. Justice will take years. In the meantime, the search continues.
On Thursday, Mahmoud Dalil, 64, parked his car in a military cemetery adjacent to where Hamada was buried and, shovel in hand, stepped through the broken gate of the vast brutalist-style compound. He didn't know where to start, but he knew what he was looking for.
In 2022, it was discovered that a military cemetery was being used as a cover-up. Huge mass grave containing thousands of bodies of murdered detaineesAccording to several men who worked there. Daryl said he had already scoured the city for his four cousins who went missing in 2012 and 2013. Now it's time to look underground, he said.
“There are probably graves like this all over the country,” he says. “We won't stop until we find everyone.”
