Where is Ahmed?

When the dictator was gone, Samar Abd al-Majid felt hopeful. Perhaps, she thought, she could finally find Ahmed. Her son had been missing for ten years and al-Majid had vowed to do everything she could to bring her boy home.

Samar al-Majid (54) wears an embroidered black dress with a brown head scarf covering her hair. She is sitting on Martyrs' Square in the centre of Damascus, watching the world go by. She seems a little lost as she sits there, clutching her handbag, her gaze distant. 

Many other relatives of the missing have gathered in the square like al-Majid. They have stuck photos of their brothers, uncles and fathers to pillars, including their phone numbers in case anyone has seen the missing people. Ahmed's picture is also there, a serious-looking young man in an Adidas jacket. "He has to be somewhere," says al-Majid.

Al-Majid comes from Hasakah in north-eastern Syria. Her son was 23 when regime forces seized him. One afternoon in 2014, they broke down the door to al-Majid's house and took Ahmed with them, she says. "They said he was a terrorist. That's what the regime called everyone who didn't submit." They took Ahmed to Damascus.

Al-Majid says she gave officials money so that they would tell her where Ahmed was. In Sednaya prison, was the answer. She begged to be allowed to visit him but to no avail. "They said I shouldn't ask about him anymore, but a mother never stops looking for her son." That's why al-Majid has come to Damascus now.

Horrors come to light

Many Syrians are in the same situation as al-Majid. It has been six weeks since the rebels led by the Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized Syria and toppled the Assad regime. 

The euphoria is still palpable. Songs about a free Syria blare from radios and the flag of the revolution, green, white and black with three red stars, hangs everywhere.

But despite the joy over the end of the tyranny, for many these are also painful days. With each passing week, more and more of the horror of the last years, decades even, comes to light. Barbaric violence was the central instrument of power for Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez, who ruled Syria for 54 years.

The regime acted cruelly against those who did not submit, particularly during the 13 years of war. More than half a million people were killed, at least a hundred thousand more disappeared. Even those who were not politically active were targeted by the secret services and state security. 

Men, women and children were abducted on their way to work, after school, at demonstrations and were taken to the torture complexes that existed everywhere, often underground. In Damascus, it was said that one walked on the heads of the tortured. 

In Syria, almost everyone knows someone who ended up in the regime's dungeons. Very few came out alive. There are indications that bodies were dissolved with acid or burned. Others were buried. 

New mass graves are being unearthed all over the country, especially in Damascus. Some are said to contain more than a hundred thousand bodies. And many relatives want only one thing: certainty. They search in hospitals and morgues. Some dig for their loved ones with their bare hands. 

Searching for the victims of Sednaya

In Adra, a suburb north of Damascus, Ali Hamoud stands at the edge of a parched meadow the size of two football fields and points to a few holes in the ground. "They dug there," he says. 

Hamoud, 24, wears a khaki uniform and a black balaclava that reveals only his eyes. He is a patrol officer with HTS and patrols the nearby highway, an area which used to be guarded by regime militiamen. After Assad's fall, local residents dug up some concrete slabs and recovered bags of human remains. It seems almost certain that this is the site of a mass grave. 

Hamoud says he understands the desperation of the families: his own uncle disappeared years ago. Nevertheless, he tells people to leave the dead alone. "It doesn't help them, knowing where the bones are." 

It is not yet known where the bodies in Adra come from. But Hamoud is certain: "Some came from Sednaya." He points to a point on the horizon. "It's not far from here." 

Sednaya: a name that represents, like no other, Assad's reign of terror. Those who were there were lucky if they were killed immediately and didn't have to suffer brutal torture, beatings, rape and humiliation. Survivors report that prisoners were hung by their limbs and their nails were ripped out. That the icy ground was doused with cold water in winter. That corpses were left to decompose alongside the prisoners.

From Adra, the road winds up a hill. The prison complex, which was built in the 1980s, stands on the hilltop, surrounded by walls, barbed wire and watchtowers.

When the rebels took one city after another in December, they opened the prisons and released the political prisoners. The images of women and men rushing through the corridors of Sednaya, calling the names of their relatives went around the world.

Now, an eerie silence lies over the complex. The hordes of journalists and helpers have left. Only a scant few visitors survey the place by the light of their mobile phones.

Some search for remains of their relatives in the abandoned cells. Others want to see this place of darkness with their own eyes. 

Thousands of DNA traces

One of them is Bassel Sattam, who carefully puts one foot in front of the other in the pitch-black, solitary confinement wing. Sattam's cousin Nemer disappeared in 2013. The family later learned that he was in Sednaya.

Sattam was able to visit his brother briefly. Nemer had told him that the guards would soon kill him because everyone who received visitors was killed afterwards. The family later found Nemer's name on a list of the dead.

Sattam wants to see this place that his cousin was never able to leave. And he wants to try to "understand the incomprehensible".

It is unclear how many people were deported to Sednaya. The Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya (ADMSP) estimates that between 2011 and 2018 alone, more than 30,000 prisoners died there, either murdered or as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation. 

After Assad's fall from power, only a few thousand survivors were found. Where the many dead are and who is responsible for their deaths are questions to which many now want answers.

Finding them is difficult. The regime had meticulously documented what happened in its killing machine, but when it became clear that Assad would lose power, his supporters began frantically destroying documents. The prison guards stole and burned lists of names, surveillance camera recordings and USB sticks. 

The evidence that still survives is now completely unprotected. In Sednaya, papers are piled up on the floor in the former offices of the prison administration, visible to everyone who comes and goes. There are countless DNA traces that need to be secured and examined. But nobody is doing so.

The White Helmets can't do it alone

The transitional government has promised to look into the crimes of the ousted regime. A delegation from the International Criminal Court has just been to Damascus and has promised support. But nothing has happened yet. Meanwhile, relatives and experts are ever more vocal in their demands that evidence should be secured in a manner that is both uniform and comprehensive.

At the moment, volunteers such as members of the White Helmets, the Syrian Civil Defence, are trying to document the traces as best they can. The White Helmets became famous during the war for pulling civilians out of the rubble after the regime's air strikes on opposition areas. 

Now they are searching the detention centres to see if prisoners have scratched names or drawings into the cell walls which could provide clues to their identity. At the mass graves, they collect what they find on the surface, such as exposed bones, and then send them to a forensic laboratory. They are appealing to the relatives not to dig up remains themselves, but to wait for the professionals.

In response to a Qantara query, a representative of the White Helmets stated that identifying the dead is not possible without the help of international experts. Syria's new government must agree on a framework with its partners and NGOs, one that makes it possible to establish justice and accountability. The relatives need answers. And every day, important evidence needed to bring the criminals to justice is being lost. "It's a race against time." 

Back at Martyrs' Square in the centre of Damascus, Samar Abd al-Majid says she has looked everywhere for Ahmed. She even begged representatives from HTS to write down his name. But they just sent her from one department to the next. 

"Nobody wanted to help me," says al-Majid. Every day she walks through the streets and shows Ahmed's photo to passers-by. Maybe he has lost his mind and is wandering around the city. 

Al-Majid says she will not stop looking for Ahmed. She is sure that her son is still alive. "A mother can feel that."

This text is an edited translation of the German original. Translated by Louise East.