No name, just a number: Survivors reveal the horror of ‘disappearing’ into Assad’s detention network

More than 100,000 people held in former Syrian regime's intelligence branches and detention centres are still missing

A staircase inside the Palestine Branch of Syria's Military Intelligence Directorate in Damascus, days after its inmates were freed by rebels who toppled former president Bashar Al Assad. AFP

Six months in Syria’s Palestine Intelligence Branch, officially known as Branch 235, nearly killed Mourad Mohammad. There, he was told by authorities to forget his real name and assigned the number 11. About 82 other people – and sometimes as many as 105 – lived in a six-by-four metre space with him.

Two months into his imprisonment, he started having suicidal thoughts. “The other detainees around me were saying, ‘Your charge is serious and you’re not ever getting out’,” he said. “I thought if I didn’t die of torture soon I’d die of illness. What was my reason to stay alive?”

He had planned to take his life until December 8, the day armed rebels unexpectedly ended the reign of president Bashar Al Assad by taking over Damascus – freeing detainees from prisons and detention centres in their advance on the capital. Only then did No 11 once more become Mourad Mohammad, albeit a thinner, frailer, sicker and malnourished version.

There had been no trial. The charges against Mr Mohammad, a 45-year-old businessman, were “terrorism, collaborating with [Al Qaeda affiliate] Jabhat Al Nusra, spying for Israel and Turkey, and transferring dollars”, he said almost flippantly.

What tone should a former detainee strike when he has almost lost his life to a political regime propped up through fear and repression so pervasive it had become woven into the very fabric of society?

It was the same tone taken by many former detainees who spoke to The National: it had happened, and that was that. The alternative would have been almost certain death, or worse, a life of torture.

Almost every Syrian has stories of at least one relative or friend who suddenly went missing one day – disappeared into Syria’s detention network in the years after 2011, when Mr Al Assad clamped down on protests calling for his downfall and fought 13 years of civil war.

But with such dungeons now exposed, many are looking for answers.

Pervasive intelligence networks

When The National visited the Palestine Branch 10 days after rebels seized the capital, evidence that fleeing authorities had attempted to conceal evidence of their crimes lay everywhere in rooms containing reams of charred documents.

The Palestine Branch was just one of a network of about 48 intelligence and security branches spread across Syria and responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

Syria under Mr Al Assad and his Baath party ran on fear, repression, and a vast network of informants – all perpetuated by the pervasive security and intelligence services.

Political dissidents and ordinary citizens would be detained, interrogated and often charged with vague crimes such as “terrorism”, “attending a protest”, “instigation”, or in some cases, made to sign blank papers upon which charges would be added later, former detainees told The National. In one document viewed by The National, a detainee of Branch 251 – the Khatib Branch – was arrested for “riding a motorbike”.

Many suspected dissidents disappeared at checkpoints, or were taken from their homes.

Although the rebels freed around 24,200 people from prisons and detention centres, the fate of 112,414 remains unknown – likely “perished under torture” or extrajudicially killed, according to Fadel Abdulghany, director of the SNHR.

Picking up the pieces

Over two days, Mr Mohammad revisited his prison in the Palestine Branch, in the Damascus suburbs. Starting in the morning, he sifted through the property department of the sprawling detention centre, looking for identification papers that might help him return to his family in neighbouring Turkey. The National met him on the second say as he searched through the clutter of the destroyed room – clothes, licence plates, medicines and legal documents strewn haphazardly. He slowly sorted other people’s papers that he found into separate boxes.

“I’m putting in the effort so no one else has to,” he said as he wandered around the room. “On one hand, it will hopefully help me find my own papers, some proof of identity. On the other hand, hopefully it will help other [former detainees] who are also looking for their belongings. Or help people who are looking for clues about the fate of their families.”

Nominally, the intelligence branches were there to deal with threats to national security. In practice, they functioned as mechanisms to arrest and torture anyone perceived as a threat to the ruling order.

“They took me to the third floor to the interrogation department, where I stayed for an hour and a half. I wasn’t scared because I knew I hadn’t done anything,” Mr Mahmoud said of the day he was arrested, shrugging.

“But then they moved us to the torture area downstairs. They beat me: ‘You have to confess’, even though I didn’t do anything. The papers were already filled out and ready, and they made me sign them. It wasn’t just me, everyone was tortured this way. They flogged me with thick cable pipes and then moved me to the cell over here,” he said.

“I spent six months in this cell, surrounded by disease. It felt like 60 years.”

The cell still smelt rancid. Mr Mohammad showed The National the left corner, where he had been allotted a few tiles to sleep on; the inmates slept in tight proximity, head-to-feet. The man who slept next to him had spent nine years in the Palestine Branch.

The detainees used a rolled-up piece of tinfoil as a pencil to mark the days of the month on a wall. Next to it was a “torture schedule”, where they kept track of which inmate was called out for interrogation on a given day.

Across the room, a bag of clothes Mr Mohammad had left behind hung by a wire from a shelf: “I hung them up there to kill off the lice and vermin,” he said.

The water was dirty and undrinkable. He counted at least 22 people that he knew of who died of what he suspected to be cholera – three of them from his cell.

“On August 16, they let us go out to the yard for some fresh air,” he said. “That was the only time [during my detention] I ever felt the air on my skin. I’ll never forget that date.”

Then, on December 8 when rebels swept into the capital, “we heard gunfire. The women in the cells downstairs screamed ‘[the rebels] are here’!”

“We didn’t know what was going on. We thought the authorities were coming to execute us. We just heard chaos and we saw the security services running away. We thought we were about to die. We were preparing for death. Then, we were freed.”

Mr Mohammad’s experience is typical of detention centres throughout the country. The city of Aleppo in Syria’s industrial heartland, like every major city, is dotted with detention centres belonging to the air force’s intelligence, “political security” forces and military police, all of which served to sow fear among the people.

Guards at a political security branch on the edge of Aleppo’s Al Jabriyeh district showed The National a ledger titled, “List of people released and who have promised to co-operate”. It listed names, political affiliations, and a summary of information collected about each one. Many on the list were marked as belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militia with a large presence in northern Syria.

Torture implements lay scattered on the floor, including a device known as the “the flying carpet” – two wedged wooden panels, inside which detainees would be folded in on themselves. There were metal hooks on the wall from which prisoners would be hung. Heavy metal shackles lay discarded on a table.

Hamzi Maan Al Alwani, 52, from the city of Hama, was detained in Aleppo’s political security branch for a month and five days in 2021 because his brother took part in anti-government protests.

Mr Al Alwani, who owns agricultural land near Aleppo, said he managed to avoid some of the torture to which other prisoners were subjected to extract false confessions – including having their feet burnt.

“The guards took around $3,000 from me, so they had no reason to torture me. They tortured me a bit so I would pay the money,” Mr Al Alwani said. “Then they understood that I had money so they left me alone, but those who didn’t have money were tortured.”

Shown pictures of the political security branch, Mr Al Alwani confirmed that it was the place he was detained in a “solitary” confinement cell with around seven other men for 21 days. They were forced to stand and sit in rotation because there was not enough space.

Many of his cellmates disappeared.

“The guards said they took them away to the military hospital for two or three days for treatment, but then they disappeared,” he said. “We never saw them again.”

Tracing the dead and the missing

Rebel fighters, who have begun merging into the new interim government’s security forces, now use part of the building as an office. They say they are protecting the shelves of documents the regime left, and attempting to maintain records of the detainees kept here.

In the days following Mr Al Assad’s downfall, hundreds of families of missing detainees descended on the security and intelligence branches, searching for documents that would provide clues to the fate of their relatives. Security branches around the country were left in disarray. Now, vital papers and detainee belongings crunch underfoot as journalists and the families of the missing look for answers.