Desperate families and tortured bodies at Damascus morgue

Syrians are starting to get answers about the fate of missing relatives

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There were 34 photographs of decaying corpses taped to a wall outside the morgue of Damascus Hospital on Tuesday morning. The bodies, shrouded in body bags and in various states of decay, were unidentified. Instead, they were each assigned a number, written on a placard placed against their chest.

A Telegram account run by a group of medical students shared the photographs after Syrian rebel fighters transported the decomposing bodies to the Damascus Hospital from Harasta Military Hospital – where they had been found after security forces loyal to the former regime fled the building days earlier.

“There are 36 bodies,” the account announced overnight. Two bodies were not pictured: a woman whose smashed face was unrecognisable, and a pile of human bones. “Forensic doctors will begin to study and identify the bodies. The process will take three to four days.”

Family members could not wait that long. By early morning, hundreds of people had mobbed the hospital, hoping to identify missing loved ones who had disappeared into the Assad regime’s notoriously deadly detention system – parts of which have been dubbed “death camps” by rights groups.

“I’ve spent the last 10 days looking for my brother. I haven’t slept,” a desperate man outside one of the mortuary rooms told a guard as forensic doctors attempted to work inside. “Please, for God’s sake, let me in to see if he’s in there.”

The guard, a rebel fighter who said he took part in the operation to transfer the bodies from Harasta to Damascus, was resolute.

“I’m going to make things easier for you. Go to the Telegram page, or go to the entrance and look at the pictures we taped,” he replied. He blocked the doorway with his body as dozens of people tried to squeeze past him. “If you see your brother or someone who resembles him, come back here and I’ll let you in to check.”

The man walked to a corner amid the chaos, looked at his phone and muttered in bewilderment. “These bodies are too unrecognisable,” he told The National as he scrolled through the photographs. “Maybe body number two? Fourteen? If he’s even here.”

Eventually, the guard relented as the pressure of the crowd threatened to push him over. Dozens of people flooded into the room, holding tissues or handkerchiefs over their noses as they opened the body bags.

The guard said he understood Syrian families' desperation to know the fate of their loved ones. “We are not the Assad regime,” he said. “We’re trying to return every detainee to their families – even if they’re in body bags. Many of those who were disappeared either died or were executed in the prisons.”

After Bashar Al Assad surrendered Syria to the opposition by escaping to Russia, ending decades of dictatorial rule by his family, Syria’s once-feared intelligence services quickly abandoned their posts in prisons and security branches, allowing rebel fighters to enter places such as the Harasta Military Hospital.

It was one of three military hospitals that primarily received the bodies of detainees who died from torture or brutal prison conditions, according to Human Rights Watch and other rights groups.

What were military secrets are now slowly being exposed to the world by rebel forces. Sednaya prison – which was thought to harbour thousands of civilian, political, and anti-government detainees in secret underground cells – has been searched extensively. Those who were found alive were freed. The fate of thousands of others remains unknown.

But the families of the detained are finally beginning to get answers about the fate of more than 100,000 people who have disappeared since 2011, when Mr Al Assad's forces cracked down on pro-democracy protests.

‘I wish we had found him alive’

“People can finally have answers now,” said Abu Laith, a rebel fighter who had just identified his cousin among the bodies.

The cousin had been missing since early 2012, when the regime crushed anti-government protests. Protesters took up arms, organising into militias and igniting a vicious and multifaceted civil war for the next 14 years.

Abu Laith had driven from Aleppo to Sednaya prison on Monday in search of his missing uncle and cousin when security forces abandoned the compound. He was one of thousands of civilians and fighters who went to the facility in search of their missing loved ones, with no luck.

On Monday evening, civil defence crews searching for prisoners in secret cells announced their operation was over. After losing hope, Abu Laith began his return trip to Aleppo on Tuesday morning. But he swiftly turned around after receiving an urgent phone call.

“A relative called me to say he saw a photo of my cousin at the Damascus Hospital. He sent me the photo. It really was him,” he said.

He showed The National a photo of a stout, confident-looking young man in a tracksuit – his cousin, Ahmad. Then he scrolled to another photo of a gaunt, jaundiced and heavily malnourished body in a white shroud.

Ahmad had been assigned the number 16. Abu Laith was happy to dignify the number with a name.

“I’m here to take his body back to Aleppo so we can give him a proper burial,” he said. “But I wish we had found him alive. I wish we’d been able to release him from Sednaya after we freed the country. I wish we could be celebrating together.”

Forensic doctors who spoke to The National at Damascus Hospital said the bodies were too decomposed to know for sure the extent of the torture they had suffered.

“The bodies show signs of extreme malnutrition. Many of them were clearly starving, that’s for sure,” said Dr Aslaan Ibrahim. “And they showed signs of extreme distress. Other than that, it’s too difficult to tell.”

Dr Ibrahim was clearly overwhelmed as he spoke to The National. Nearby, another doctor was silently holding a phone as he scrolled through the photographs of bodies in the Telegram account. Across the hall, another doctor appeared ready to cry as people tried to push past him into a mortuary room where medics were still studying the bodies for identification.

“When you see first-hand the kind of oppression that we’ve been dealing with for 54 years, it makes us feel things we’ve never felt before. It’s finally over,” Dr Ibrahim said.

“Even if I’m a forensics doctor, and I’m supposed to put my feelings aside – I’m still overwhelmed. We’re humans. In the face of such brutality … I’m not a robot.”

The fighter Abu Laith was getting ready to transport his cousin Ahmad's body to Aleppo. Referring to the hundreds of thousands of people still missing after being arbitrarily detained in the Assad regime’s detention centres, he predicted that the bodies found so far were only a drop in the ocean.

The secrecy surrounding the prisons and military hospitals meant the Syrian people always felt the oppression of their political system, but now they are coming face-to-face with it.

“Most of the detainees who are missing are probably dead,” said Abu Laith. “There are still mass graves all over the country that we need to locate.”