DAMASCUS, Syria – Body #11 was relatively pristine and showed few signs of abuse other than a hint of painful surprise. No. 26 was in worse condition, the decomposition more advanced, but still not enough to cover the scarlet bruises on the shrinking skin of his forehead. No. 18's face was also injured, but was otherwise surprisingly intact; his mouth was open as if he were in the middle of a sentence.
Sabri Riyabi, a 32-year-old man from the suburb of Jobar, paced the pastel green morgue in the basement of Mujtahed Hospital in Damascus, searching among the unknown dead for Mohammad, the brother he last saw in 2011.
He lifted the collar of his sweatshirt to cover his nose and then stood over each of the six bodies with the flashlight on his phone.
The mortuary of the Mujtahed Hospital in Damascus.
(Ayman Oghanna / For The Times)
None were Mohammad.
He asked a staff member if these were all the bodies that were in the hospital that day.
“Don’t bother going to the other room – everyone there has been picked up,” the guard said.
Riyabi sighed.
“It’s my second day searching. I have visited all the hospitals here in Damascus. Nothing so far,” he said. “My parents don’t dare come. They don’t want to go through this.”
Wars are often reduced to statistics: about people killed or wounded, about areas destroyed, about the costs of reconstruction. But perhaps the most enduring expression of the tragedy in Syria's 13-year civil war is the disappearances and the agonizing search for the estimated 150,000 people who disappeared in the conflict – most of them at the hands of then-President Bashar al-Assad's security services.
As rebels stormed through major cities last week amid a sweeping collapse of the Syrian army, they opened prison doors, sparking scenes of joy as thousands of prisoners won their freedom.
But for the families of the missing, it was a different story. In the five days since Assad's fall, people from across Syria have flocked to the capital, searching hospital morgues and the facilities of a prison system notorious for its cruelty.
One of the victims was Riyabi's brother, an army soldier accused of collaborating with the opposition. He was imprisoned, but the family was never told where he was.
Dalal Al-Sumah also waded through the bureaucratic labyrinth. Her 16-year-old son Ahmad was picked up in 2012 in Sahnaya, a town southwest of Damascus that had joined anti-Assad protests a year earlier.
For years she searched and bribed every authority figure she could find just to find out where Ahmad was being held. One person told her he was in the Air Force Intelligence internment camp, one of Assad's most brutal security services. But when she received permission from the Justice Ministry to visit, the guards at the gate told her that Ahmad was not there.
In the notorious Branch 215 military prison in Damascus.
(Ayman Oghanna / For The Times)
Two bribes and two unsuccessful visits later, she learned he was in Sednaya, described by human rights groups as a “human slaughterhouse.” Here too, the guards denied that Ahmad was an inmate, but this time they warned her not to ask again.
“He wasn’t involved in anything. He lived in his grandmother's house and worked as a bricklayer,” Al-Sumah emphasized. “Why did they take him?”
For many, the journey into Assad's gulags began in detention centers attached to military intelligence branches; Many of their headquarters are located in the so-called security district of Damascus' Kafr Sousa neighborhood, each equipped with prison cells and interrogation chambers.
A summons to the neighborhood was a nightmare scenario for Syrians. Now bearded militants stand at the reinforced metal barrier at the neighborhood's entrance, barely able to hold back the flow of people hoping to find information about their loved ones. On the night of the government's collapse, residents ransacked the buildings, leaving behind tattered uniforms, spent .50-caliber ammunition, crates of rocket-propelled grenades and burned vehicles before rebels could restore order.
A portrait of the exiled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad hangs in front of the notorious military prison “Department 215” in Damascus.
(Ayman Oghanna / For The Times)
One of those rebels, a 39-year-old who called himself Abu Ahmad, passed through Ward 215, which specialized in raids and was nicknamed the “Death Ward” by inmates. It first gained notoriety after a defector using the pseudonym Caesar published tens of thousands of photos of deceased prisoners who had been tortured in its dungeons in 2014.
Abu Ahmad comes from a rural area near the capital (he declined to give details for security reasons, he said) and had spent the last 12 years away from his family fighting with the opposition. Previously, he said, he had been imprisoned for two years because of Islamist leanings and had moved between different security agencies.
Like an expert, he compared the treatment of prisoners by the various authorities.
“The Air Force Intelligence guys, their hobby was breaking your bones. They just had to do it. The Palestine Branch? Their goal was to humiliate you,” he said. “Each branch had its specialty.”
Abu Ahmad remained in the solitary ward. Each cell had a sloping ceiling that was 6 feet high at the top. The bathroom was a metal-lined hole that took up a portion of the floor that was 6 feet by 4 feet. Food could be pushed in through a metal slider at the bottom of the door, with another sliding window at face level.
At the end of the corridor were some of the larger cells, still lined with discarded uniforms and drab gray blankets donated by the United Nations. Although the room was small, more than a dozen could have been accommodated in one cell, Abu Ahmad said.
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1. A set of keys to the prison cells in the notorious military prison “215” in Damascus. 2. A prison cell in the notorious military prison “215” in Damascus. (Ayman Oghanna/Ayman Oghanna/For The Times) 3. A prison cell in the notorious military prison “215” in Damascus. (Ayman Oghanna/Ayman Oghanna/For The Times)
A makeshift clothesline hung from an air vent, and the walls were decorated with graffiti, including slogans reading “Satisfaction is an eternal treasure” and “One day liberation will come,” daubed in blood or feces. On another wall, prisoners' names, birthplaces and dates of incarceration were engraved.
The security departments had their own records, which were characterized by careful accounting, with reams of files now scattered throughout the office floors. One of these was a notebook with names and associated fingerprints from when the inmates first entered the prison. Many were listed there for “terrorism,” a catchall term that included participation in anti-Assad activities. Another report appeared to be a listing of the bodies of prisoners who died in custody and were transferred to nearby military hospitals or returned to their families. The number exceeded 7,000.
Other files contained detailed accounts of the investigation and highlighted the all-encompassing surveillance system under which Syrians lived for decades, which included a wide network of informants keeping tabs on a target's every move.
Even prisons had their informants, not to mention them shawishor sergeant, who could be employed by prison authorities to maintain order among inmates. A statement is the statement of a prisoner complaining about a cellmate who raped him and forced him to perform sexual acts in front of other cellmates. Another letter from the warden complained that uniforms and bedding had been worn for more than five years and were “no longer suitable for human use” due to the high incidence of skin diseases.
Back at the Mujtahed mortuary, 84-year-old undertaker Mohammad Umayrah began washing the body of a victim killed in an Israeli airstrike two days ago. He dipped a washcloth and wiped the caked blood from his face, then stuffed tissues into his mouth and nostrils. Working quickly and with minimal fuss, he wrapped the body in a plastic bag – to prevent leakage – and then in three layers of white fabric.
A guard photographs a corpse in the mortuary of Mujtahed Hospital in Damascus.
(Ayman Oghanna / For The Times)
Umayrah had retired years ago but was drafted in after several staff members fled the rebel advance, leaving the hospital short of staff. He glanced at the people entering the washing area looking for their loved ones and shook his head as he watched them examine the bodies and then leave in disappointment.
He lost three sons early in the war and had no idea where they were, he said, but also had no hope of identifying them.
“I'll tell you something: Even if I saw their bodies in front of me now, I wouldn't be able to recognize them after 10 years,” he said.
He watched in silence as the family of the airstrike victim took away the body.