Syria's new head of intelligence pledges to end abuses from Assad era

Anas Khattab says security establishment will be reformed as families tell of suffering under old regime

A woman holds a portrait of a missing relative during a protest calling for accountability outside Hijaz train station in Damascus on Friday. AP

Syria's new intelligence chief has announced a plan to dismantle the institutions he said were responsible for torture and corruption under deposed president Bashar Al Assad, as families told The National of abuse and disappearances under the old regime.

“The security establishment will be reconstituted again, after dissolving all security branches and restructuring them in a manner befitting our people,” Anas Khattab said, two days after he was made the head of Syria's General Intelligence Service.

He said Syrians had suffered “from the injustice and tyranny of the former regime, through its various security apparatuses that spread corruption”.

Syrian prisons were emptied of regime critics after the fall of Mr Al Assad as officials and agents of the toppled government fled the country.

Most of these centres are now guarded by fighters of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the rebel group leading the armed coalition that seized power in Damascus.

Syrians have rushed to prisons in the hope of finding traces of relatives and friends who went missing under the Assad regime.

Following years of anguish and quiet despair, some are now finding a long-awaited sense of closure. Previously unable to mourn out of fear of reprisals, families in the capital have been conducting rituals of remembrance for those taken by the “Mukhabarat”, as the intelligence services were known.

Ahmad Alama was just 24 years old when he was captured by air force intelligence in the Al Amara district of Damascus in 2013.

He was charged with setting up anti-regime social media pages and taking part in protests. His family received confirmation of his death in 2015, and for nine years, they were unable to honour his memory.

“I managed to get to someone who works in the air force intelligence, one of the regime’s most brutal security apparatus. He showed me the photo of my nephew, executed and with a number placed on his chest,” Ahmad's uncle, businessman Ammar Alama, told The National.

“He was not a criminal, or a fighter or anyone who ever carried arms, his crime was praying at the Tobeh mosque, in the district of Al Ebeh, and participating in an anti-regime protest. They were kids.”

A few days after the street demonstration, regime agents detained Mr Alama after raiding and smashing up the family home, the uncle said. “They broke it all, the lights, the windows, the washing machine,” he told The National.

“They took him to Mazzeh Investigations air force intelligence branch … When I managed to get a visit, he weighed only about 35 kilos and he was as thin as a stick. I wished that the pain would end for him when I saw him – his teeth were broken, and I didn’t even recognise him.”

Intelligence agents would commonly extort desperate families for big money by offering the release of prisoners.

“They asked for 20 million Syrian pounds back then (about US$100,000] to release him,” Ammar Alama said. “We were told Ahmad would be sent to a military judge and set free. But later we received information that all those who were sent from air force intelligence to Sednaya prison were executed upon arrival, up to 700 people, and Ahmed was one of them.

“The officers we tried to get to release him were upset as they lost a lot of money because it was a profitable business for them. We couldn’t even hold a funeral or a service for our boy and we were hounded by the authorities.

“It was a harrowing situation for us, we couldn’t even mention him and publicly we had to even disown him or they would start taking our other children,” Ammar Alama added. “If he was alive, he would be so proud that Syria is free again.”

According to UK-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 100,000 people died in Syrian prisons and detention centres during Syria's 13-year civil war.

After the Assad regime fell, bodies of the disappeared started arriving at hospitals from intelligence branches and prisons such as Sednaya, with families left searching for their loved ones among the corpses.

Shahd Bou Hassoun, a volunteer doctor at Al Moshtahed General Hospital in Damascus, told The National that many of the bodies were disfigured, showing clear signs of torture or injury.

“People have been supporting the families, and we’ve been trying to run things as smoothly as possible,” the doctor said. “As volunteers, we come to fill a gap and help people find some closure.”