PHOTO: Mohammed Issam Zaghloul, now missing, with his sons Saryah and Zaid in June 2011 in Darayya near Damascus
Amnesty International said in a report on Thursday that the Assad regime is using the “enforced disappearance” of thousands of people in Syria to crush opposition and extort money.
The 70-page report, “Between Prison and the Grave“, documents how Syrian authorities are profiting from the widespread and disappearances through a black market. Amnesty says the activities constitute crimes against humanity.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented at least 65,000 disappearances since 2011 — 58,000 of them civilians. Those taken are often held in overcrowded detention cells in poor conditions, with deaths reported from rampant disease, torture, and extrajudicial execution.
The report concludes:
The enforced disappearances carried out since 2011 by the Syrian government were perpetrated as part of an organized attack against the civilian population that has been widespread, as well as systematic, and therefore amount to crimes against humanity.
Amnesty International’s research indicates that enforced disappearances in Syria are carried out by a range of actors: all four branches of the security forces, namely Military Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, Political Security and General Intelligence (sometimes referred to as State Security); the armed forces; and militias associated with the Syrian government, including the National Defence Forces and the shabiha. Those subjected to enforced disappearance are held in a network of detention facilities across the country, including detention centres run by the security forces, each of which has a central branch in Damascus as well as regional, city, and local branches; civil prisons; and unofficial detention centres.
Amnesty notes that the regime “has carried out an orchestrated campaign of enforced disappearances” since 2011. At the beginning of the uprising, authorities targeted “large numbers of peaceful opponents of the government, including demonstrators, political
activists, human rights defenders, media workers, doctors, and humanitarian aid workers”. However, the practice “evolved” to seize those considered disloyal and family members of individuals wanted by the security forces. Later, officials began using the disapperances “for their own personal gain” and for “the settling of personal grievances”.
A United Nations discussion of the disappearances:
Amnesty compiled the report from interviews with 71 family members, friends, or colleagues of people who have been forcibly disappeared; eight people who were released after having been seized; and 14 international and national experts on enforced disappearance.
In the black market, middlemen or brokers are paid bribes — described as “a big part of the economy” by one activist — by family members. A lawyer from Damascus summarizes that the payments are “a cash cow for the regime…a source of funding they have come to rely on”.
In one case, dentist Rania al-Abbasi was arrested in 2013 along with her six children, aged between 2 and 14, two days after her husband was seized during a raid on their home. No one from the family has been heard of since. In another case, human rights lawyer Khalil Ma’touq, disappeared in 2013 while his daughter Raneem was also missing for two months.
Some families have sold their property or used all their savings to pay the bribes, sometimes in exchange for false information.
Family members who try to inquire about disappeared relatives are often at risk of arrest or being abducted themselves.
Amnesty notes that “several non-state armed groups” have also “engaged in abduction and hostage-taking”, with some abductions also showing “many of the elements of enforced disappearance”. The organization said a report on these detentions will be released in the next few months.
