DAMASCUS — Mohammad Chaeeb spoke softly into his cellphone, telling a relative the grim information: He discovered his brother on the 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 appeared as if he had died screaming. “He doesn’t look regular. He doesn’t even have eyes.”
The useless man was jailed 5 months in the past, disappearing right into a darkish jail system below the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. His physique is only one of many present in Syrian detention facilities and prisons since Assad’s authorities fell final weekend.
Among the prisoners died simply weeks in the past. Others perished months earlier. Syrians internationally at the moment are circulating pictures of the our bodies in hope of seeing slain family members whose destiny had been a thriller.
On the morgue visited by The Related Press on Wednesday in Damascus, households flocked to a wall the place a number of the photos had been pinned in a haunting gallery of the useless. Family members desperately scanned the pictures for a recognizable face.
Mohammad Chaeeb by no means knew why his brother had been imprisoned. “We heard tales — hashish, organ trafficking, medication, weapon buying and selling. However he had nothing to do with any of that,” he mentioned.
He rushed to the morgue after one other brother residing in Turkey despatched him a photograph of a physique that appeared acquainted. He was in a position to determine his brother by a mole below his ear and a half-amputated finger, an damage from when he was 12.
Standing over the physique, he lifted the drape and gently pulled out his brother’s left hand, analyzing it intently. “Right here,” he mentioned, pointing to the stump.
Close by, forensic employees labored quickly to determine the our bodies and hand them over to kinfolk.
Yasser Qasser, a forensic assistant on the morgue, mentioned they obtained 40 our bodies that morning from the hospital that had been being fingerprinted and having DNA samples taken. The employees had already recognized about eight, he mentioned. “However dozens of households are arriving, and the numbers don’t match.”
Some our bodies got here from the infamous Saydnaya 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 below immense stress. 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 seemed to be the results of torture, he added.
An estimated 150,000 folks have been detained or reported lacking in Syria since 2011. Underneath 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.
Citing 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 steadily 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 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 Saydnaya.
As they searched the morgue, some households moved among the many our bodies, weeping quietly and pausing to search for acquainted options. The our bodies lay coated in white shrouds, every marked with a quantity and a few bearing the label “unknown.”
Hilala Meryeh, a 64-year-old Palestinian mom of 4, stood within the dingy identification room, luggage of our bodies throughout her. She had simply discovered certainly one of her sons.
She paused, screwed her eyes closed and turned her face towards the ceiling, murmuring a prayer. Her 4 boys had been arrested by the previous Syrian regime in 2013 throughout a crackdown on the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. 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!”
“Why did he do that to his folks?” Meryeh cried out. “Imprison them, we wouldn’t have objected. Strive them, however to slaughter them?”
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 useless,” 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 residing 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 fees of evading navy service.
With trembling arms, Imad Habbal lifted the masking, his voice breaking as he wept and spoke to his brother.
“I advised you to not come,” he mentioned. “I want you didn’t come.”
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Related Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed to this report.
