School uniforms for children were hung on the door. Their academic binders were on their desk. The toys covered with dust were always sitting on the ground.
This is how Naila Al-Abbasi found her sister’s apartment Rania in Syria, almost 12 years after her detainee alongside her six children and plunged into the secret prison network and detention facilities for the Old Regime.
Al-Abbasi had traveled from Saudi Arabia to visit the Home in Dummar project, a wealthy district in the northwest of the Syrian capital, Damascus, on February 25.
“The smell of murder fills the house. The walls and curtains are sad as if they were crying for their separation,” said Al-Abbasi on Instagram.
She found every corner covered with dirt. The bird carcasses that stolen in the house were dispersed on the floor.
It was once a brilliant and busy house for six children: Dima, 13 years old; ENTISAR, 12; Najah, 11; Alaa, 8; Ahmed, 6; and Layan, 1.
For years, Hassan al-Abbasi, Rania’s brother, asked for information about their fate.
He actively wanted children following the eviction of the government of Bashar al-Assad last December. But his calls have remained unanswered, without any words on the fate of the family since March 2013.
“The situation is very difficult, because none of the children has arisen and it was the first time that our family has entered the house in 12 years,” Hassan told CBC News in Ottawa, where he lives with his wife and children.
“It was very painful.”
Children probably transferred to orphanages
On March 9, 2013, Assad’s military intelligence members arrested Rania Al-Abbasi’s husband, Abdul Rahman Yasin, in their house, before returning to plunder all gold and money, entering three cars, computers and mobile phones, as well as passports and owner documents of their properties and the dental clinic of Al-Abasi.
Two days later, the intelligence members returned to the Al-Abbasi arrest, as well as his six children and Secretary Majdoline al-Qady, who were with them at the time.
Parents were accused of having provided humanitarian assistance to those who need it during the Syrian Revolution, which broke out in March 2011.
The case of Al -Abbasi quickly became one of the most important in Syria, stressing the issue of missing prisoners – parents and children.
Hassan thinks that children probably stayed with Rania in detention establishments, according to other detainees from the prisoners, before being transferred to orphanages or childcare guards and stripped of their identities and of family origin. But it was impossible to check without access to the documents of the organizations.
The disappearance of full families is one of the widespread atrocities committed during the brutal rule of Assad.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights said it had received reports from this practice several years ago and that it involved institutions such as SOS Syria children.
In a statement At CBC News on February 25, the organization declared that it “recognizes the concerns concerning children placed in healthcare organizations, including Villages for SOS children, by the former government”.
“During the war, many children were unnecessarily separated from their families and placed in alternative care services by the authorities without appropriate documentation of their origins.”
Arrest of children, “systematic” families
Hassan said his family had paid thousands of dollars to prison officials and members involved in these operations for any information on Rania and her family, but each time they find themselves with unverifiable information and no real knowledge of their location.
He said that the child’s paternal aunt had visited a Syrian detention center in 2013 to request the release of children in the months following their detention. The aunt was then detained for three months.
“Stoping children and families was systematic. The regime could have returned the children to their loved ones, but they rather threatened to stop them too if they are expressed,” said Hassan.
He said that the family had hired a lawyer to examine the orphanages in 2022 after learning that the diet placed the children of those detained or killed in their prisons. It also did not provide any answers.
In the following years, Hassan was informed by a worker in one of the orphanages he recognized four of the six children Although their names have been modified. Despite attempts to reach them, Hassan could not verify it.
“These children grew up with us … If you killed them, send us photos, at least we will know that they were killed,” said Hassan, calling on those involved in the operations of the Old Regime.
At least 3,700 children have disappeared
The Syrian Human Rights network says that the verified lists show that around 3,700 children have disappeared by the Assad regime since 2011, although many suggest that the number is much higher – more than 10,000.
At the end of January, SNHR called The Syrian transitional government to conduct an “immediate and complete” investigation into all organizations that have received children from the Old Regime.
“Many parents think that detained families – the child, the mother and the father – that the diet killed [all of] They … but there are so many children in these organizations, “said Hassan.
After the exile of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Hosni Korno says he has no hope that his four sons, who were arrested at the height of the Arab Spring in 2013, are still alive.
The SOS children’s villages said that in the context of new management changes, he began to accept only children with documentation in 2018.
“We regret the untenable situation in which we found ourselves during the reception of children and unequivocally disapprove of such practices, because children should never be separated from their families unless it is in their best interest,” the organization said in the press release.
The fate of Rania al-Abbasi remains unknown, as well as that of hundreds of thousands of other prisoners in the prisons of Assad. The tombs were discovered after the fall of the Assad regime, but he could take years to identify the remains.
The father believed killed after a month in detention
Hassan said the family thought her brother-in-law had been tortured and killed about a month after her detention. They arrived at this conclusion after recognizing Abdul Rahman Yasin in one of the 53,000 photos shared by a defector from the Syrian military police nicknamed “César” for transforming Syria photos in order to document torture and brutal deaths in Assad’s prisons.
In the years that followed, Hassan said that relatives would ask people to visit the home of Al-Abbasi and Yasin to check and see what was left. But they were too afraid that he would always be monitored or inhabited by intelligence agents.
Hassan said the biggest concern for his family is that children may not be in orphanages or even in the country.
“We have faith. If they are dead, then they are martyrs. And if they are not dead, then we continue to search for them,” he said.
“This is a disaster among many. So far, we have not reached the real extent of these crimes – we have only been part.”
