Faced by war and intimidating bureaucracy, there seems little hope in sight for relatives of those missing in Syria. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
Syria's three-year civil war has left more than 100,000 dead and uprooted 9 million people from their homes. But perhaps the most chilling statistic of all is the number who are missing, who have disappeared into the intimidating interior of the regime's "security branches", where interrogation and torture are carried out.
Numbers are hard to pin down. Last month, the Guardian reported that11,000 Syrians had been killed while in the custody of regime security forces. A photographer from the Syrian military police defected with 55,000 images of 11,000 victims. He described a bureaucratic system in which the disappeared were executed, documented and then secretly buried in a rural area.
But many more remain unaccounted for. Relatives describe a heartbreaking, desolate search through some of the most terrifying organs of state power to try to find a trace of loved ones. And those who have been released tell of dismal conditions of detention, of dozens of people crammed into tiny cells, of long days unfed and unwatered, waiting for the next round of interrogation in which subjects are given electric shocks or hung from the walls.
The Guardian has spoken to the mother of a 17-year old boy who is still missing, the nephew of a man who died in captivity and three released prisoners.
Ahmed Safi, 31, from Homs
Ahmed, a father of two, was killed in a regime prison according to his nephew, Abu Muhammed, who tells the story.
My uncle made a living from his clothes store. He was aware of demonstrations against the regime but didn't join in because he lived in a district loyal to the Syrian regime.Instead, he helped the revolution by promoting a network for financial donations by Syrians in exile and rich businessmen still in the country. As soon as he got the money, Ahmed would purchase clothes or food for needy families in various districts of Homs or pass money to the families, if they needed cash.It was a hot evening in July. Ahmed was running home with his five-year-old child. He was stopped at a checkpoint: Altarbiyia, one of the most intimidating in Homs. It is common knowledge among locals that men detained at Altarbiyia go missing, and the checkpoint is known in Homs as the 'human slaughterhouse'.
An eyewitness told Ahmed's family the military had arrested him. Ahmed's young son was left abandoned in the van at the checkpoint for two hours. An acquaintance recognised the boy by chance and took him from the van, later telling Ahmed's wife of her husband's detention. Ahmed's nephew, Abu Muhammed, continues:
His family hired a lawyer to locate Ahmed. The lawyer learned that Ahmed was locked up at the military security branch in Homs, accused of acquiring money from foreign agencies and collaborating with terrorists.The lawyer was able to reach Ahmed in jail but no one in his family was allowed to visit him. The lawyer told Ahmed's wife, who was pregnant with their third child, that Ahmed's health was in decline. He had lost lots of weight, for lack of adequate food, and he had been tortured by electricity in every session of interrogation. Ahmed could hardly stand on his feet.After 45 days, the lawyer was summoned to the court in regard of Ahmed's case. The family thought that was a sign Ahmed might be released or sentenced; they would be able to see him for once, at least.When the lawyer arrived at the court, to his surprise he did not see Ahmed: he had been called to the court to obtain Ahmed's death certificate, ID card and the keys to his van. The death certificate recorded the cause of death as natural. A number for his grave was handed over.
Rami Nasir, 30, Damascus
Rami, a father of two daughters, was also detained at a checkpoint and held for seven months. He was eventually released and fled to Jordan with his family.
I was with my wife heading to hospital in Damascus. We had to stop by a military checkpoint before we got to our destination. The checkpoint guard pointed at my student ID, which reads College of Sciences, physics department. He took a list of names out of his pocket. I did not know that my name was in the list.Immediately after, our mobiles were taken and my wife sent home. The guard blindfolded my eyes and handcuffed my hands to throw me in a car. I was taken to a building that used to be a cultural centre but now is a detention depot, in Jassim city, in the capital. I was held in the centre for one night and shifted to the military security branch in Daraa city.The cell was 5 metres by 5 metres, full of more than 100 detainees. For food, we got a piece of bread twice a day.After 10 days, I was interrogated. The guard blindfolded me and handcuffed me. The instructor told me to kneel. He asked me about an activist I had once contacted by phone. I denied any link with him. The interrogator began shouting and beating me with a thick green pipe on my back.The interrogator told me he would himself confess on my behalf and write down what he wanted. Then I was taken to the air intelligence branch. The moment I stepped into the branch, along with another nine detainees, handcuffed and blindfolded, we were greeted with a wave of kicks, slaps and blows coming from all directions. Some of the blows were from fists, others from pipes.I was permitted to visit the loo twice a day. The moment you were allowed to go to the lavatory, there were 10 guards standing opposite each other, who would aim all sort of blows at the detainee, with whips and truncheons.During a second interrogation, I was stripped to my underwear. The interrogator tied my arms to a pipe hung from a hook in the roof. Any officer or guard passing by would hit me with different things. Interrogators stubbed out cigarettes on my chest while I hung there.I was interrogated four times in that branch. Questions were: who are the rebels that you know? What sort of weapon did you use? What is your association with that mobile number?The interrogator was asking me questions I had no answers to. When I said, 'I do not know,' I would be hit. The scars are still carved on my body. I thought: it is better to sign whatever he says, just to put an end to the beating.After a few days, I was called for interrogation again. Same questions, same denials. This time, however, they poured acid on my feet while I was hanging from the wall. The pain was beyond all description. I felt my heart would blow up at that moment.The third round of interrogation had a new method of torture, which was chaining my arms back to be lifted up. My arms were crushed together for 15 minutes. Breathing was almost impossible. My shoulders were dislocated.After 23 days, I was moved to a solitary cell. It was 180cm by 130cm but there were 14 detainees with me. A detainee would stand up to allow another to sit. I was sealed up in that cell for 43 days.Every 48 hours, we would have a piece of bread we couldn't even see. We were shut in, naked except for our underwear. It was January, freezing cold. We were sitting on a floor thickly covered with piss and dirt. I was interrogated only once within these 43 days but I would be beaten twice when I went to the loo.We were allowed less than 20 seconds: if you took longer, your torture would be atrocious. We would rush back and forth to the loo. I was 95kg (15 stone) before detention, and 60kg when I was released.Some detainees died in our cell, and others died during interrogation. There was a day I moved four bodies. Some of them died because of starvation, others because of illness or injury from torture.I was moved two more times before my family bribed an officer with 400,000 Syrian lire to put my name on top of a list of detainees who would be heard by a judge. My health was waning and my family wanted to move me to hospital. The judge decided to release me. I was detained for seven months in all.I fled to Jordan with my wife and two little girls. One of my daughters was born while I was in prison. I'm still in pain, and am running back and forth to the doctor.
Warda Sulaiman, 31, Damascus
Warda was distributing medicine to wounded rebels and civilians in Damascus when she was snatched from the street by armed men. She was detained for 19 months and tortured.
My husband was pro-regime and was killed because the rebels suspected he was part of the Shabiha military but I wasn't. And when I saw my neighbour's son returning from detention to be shot dead in front of his kids, I found myself running down the street to hail the revolution against Assad.I embedded with some activists to dispense medicine in edgy areas in Damascus and Homs. I was aware that this path would earn me only imprisonment or martyrdom. I would tour pharmacies in the capital collecting medical supplies and bringing them to wounded rebels and civilians.I got a phone call from a rebel to bring down some sprays for to help stop a haemorrhage. I was waiting for the guy in the street in the evening when suddenly two big men held my arms firmly and pointed a gun to my head. They instructed me to keep silent and shoved me into a security vehicle.They told me not to deny being a rebel while possessing these sprays. I was driven to the political security branch and found myself in a corridor where more than 20 detainees were being punched and kicked. A rebel guy was brought to be electrocuted; he was paralysed for 10 minutes, and collapsed in front of me.Then the officer came to interrogate me, accusing me of killing my Shabiha husband and smuggling weapons to the rebels. He advised me not to deny, smacking my face repeatedly and abusing me verbally. I was kept in the branch until three in the morning. A jailer came to move me, along with few other detainees. I asked him where we were going. He laughed and said: 'To one of God's paradises.'We arrived at the state security's al-Khatieb branch. I was taken to a dungeon to share a 70cm-by-170cm cell with another female detainee, who was six months pregnant. There were seven solitary cells with two females inside each one. I was told I would be staying there for two days, to be released later. After 10 days, I got a new female mate, who was accused of having dealings with Mossad.The policy in the branch was to intimidate detainees by making them watch the hideous torture methods exercised inside the branch. We were allowed access to bathroom twice a day, for a single minute. The food was a little rice, rotten bread and black bitter olives with dirty water.I was taken to interrogation every day for six hours, to reveal the names of rebels I worked with. The jailer brought a thick scourge to whip me all over my body, then handcuffed me, pinning me to the door like a sheep and electrifying me until I fainted. After the torture, I signed eight blank pieces of paper. I was kept in the branch for 45 day. The jailers did their best to avoid causing any wound to my body. They would even spray my skin with stuff to bring down all the bruises.It was Friday. A jailer came to take me to court. Or so he said. But it turned to be Kefersusa military branch, not a court. The moment I got there, I fainted because of low blood pressure and was taken to a bathroom, where I saw a female detainee from Homs. I kept vomiting and was shivering. They brought me a doctor to continue the interrogation. After two hours, I felt well enough to give the jailer my details. My health was waning. I was taken to a 3-metre-by-4-metre room with a camera. Food was better in this branch. I was kept for 45 days sleeping on the floor. I can't go through what happened to me when I was alone in my cell. It was something brutal and cruel.The interrogators put me on the pro-regime al-Dunia programme. I was crying and they were laughing. The officer kept hitting me and humiliating me to say what they want me to say. I was forced to say that I had taken part in car bombings in many Alawite districts.I was dispatched to the military judiciary after the TV interview. We were supposed to see the judge but we did not: instead, we were taken to Adra prison. This was the first time I could have a cup of tea and a cigarette. This prison was much better than the other branches, but after a few months the treatment turned dreadful. The jailers would blame the terrorists for blocking roads. They brought male detainees there to torture them.There were a couple of rape cases throughout the time of the interrogation. A few female detainees fell pregnant. A few detainees were already pregnant, and had to give birth in the dungeon.A midwife would be rushed to the cell and all the detainees would be sent out, except for a few who stayed to help. I remember a baby died after five days because of not being checked by a doctor.After 16 months of imprisonment, my mother told me there was an international initiative to release seven female detainees in exchange for a few Syrian officers taken by the Free Syrian Army. My name was second on the list. But I stayed for 40 days in another detention place before finally being released. After a month, I fled Syria for Turkey, still scared that the Syrian intelligence might break in my room at any moment.
Yousif Issam, 17, Idlib
Yousif is still missing. This is his mother's account of his detention.
Yousif and his friends would always hang out in the internet cafe in the centre of Idlib. But one night, he didn't come home. I rushed to the internet cafe. I was told Yousif had been arrested by the political security branch forces in Idlib. I dashed to the branch and broke down in tears as I was trying to find my way into the building. The guard at the main gateway challenged me. I told him, in a tremulous voice, that my boy had been seized by the branch. Eventually, the receptionist affirmed that the branch had locked Yousif up.After a week, it appeared the branchfellow had lied, and Yousif was not in there. After about a week, one of his fellow inmates was acquitted and emerged to tell us that Yousif was being held by state security, and there was no way to reach him.A month later, Yousif turned up at home with papers implying that his main offence was going on anti-regime demonstrations. I was delighted, but he looked odd, and his back was full of bleeding welts.Yousif's father hurried to get a passport to get him out of Syria, but then our house was surrounded by 15 armed men one evening. They screamed in my husband's face and told him if he did not turn over the weapons, his teeth would be knocked out. They left no stone unturned in the house, and all of a sudden a masked guy shouted: 'This is Yousif. Get hold of him!'Yousif's father was unable to see him for two months. We had to escape to Turkey because it was too dangerous. I went back to visit but was turned down, along with a few other mothers. The head of the security branch did meet with us. He asked me why I was there. I said my son was being held, that he had done nothing wrong. He told me that every parent told him that. He got Yousif's file and read out the charges: he possessed weapon and was a member of a fighting brigade, and his job had been to relocate rebels by motorbike during the battle for the airport.I said that by the time the battle for the airport had been in full cry, Yousif was already in detention. So how could he have been with the rebels?He told me he would grant me a visit to Yousif, but not an acquittal. The jailer steered me to the dungeon of the building, a long corridor where I was startled to observe inmates of different ages who looked like sparrows staring through the apertures of their cells. I could immediately see that Yousif was wearing short trousers and a light shirt, and that his eyes were too red.Yousif told me he was bleeding from his eyes because of the ruthless beating he received every single day in the branch. I told him to try and bear it; not to confess.On my second visit, I brought food. He wanted falafel sandwiches, not for himself but for the other detainees, who were all starving. I spent over an hour in a falafel restaurant to get a huge bag of sandwiches, which I handed over to the reception to pass to Yousif.After a while, I was told he had been moved to the state security in Damascus, Kefersusa branch. I couldn't see him any more. Who would dare to visit the state security branch in Damascus?I tried many lawyers in Idlib. They took lots of money but they could not get the smallest tipoff about Yousif. It has become a lucrative business for lawyers, with thousands of detainees jailed by the regime. They make use of our desperation, promising information by virtue of connections with Alawite officers.It has been a year now, and we are dying to know anything about where Yousif is. His father and I spend most of the time looking at Yousif's pictures on the wall and his abandoned copybooks, in sombre silence.
Farouq Al-Habieb, 33, Homs
Farouq was detained at a checkpoint in Homs and tortured after his captors discovered pro-human rights material in his car. He was eventually released and fled to Turkey with his wife and three children.
I always wanted to be a journalist, perhaps working with international media. My passion was rekindled in course of Syrian revolution. I would help foreign journalists working in Homs, and tell them about the rebellion. The Syrian regime made it so difficult for journalists to work in Homs.I was downloading pictures and videos about Homs during the Syrian army siege. All at once, the power shut off. I had to rush at 8pm to a different area where I could pick up an internet connection. The route was disrupted by countless military checkpoints. I was stopped at one I usually got through easily.This time, the guard grabbed his mobile to call his comrades. I was held until an armed vehicle arrived to take me in.The vehicle was full of seven armed military men who pounded me with kicks and punches. I told them I was the director of a bank and a PhD holder, and pleaded with them to ring up the head of the military branch to confirm my identity.I was rushed to the state security branch, to the checkup room. The guard forced me to take everything off, while his colleagues cursed me. I was put in a solitary cell in a dungeon. I was lucky: other cells were packed. The jailers did not know what I was accused of.At the end of the corridor, several detainees were hanging by their bound arms to the roof. They were being whipped by a few guards everywhere on their bodies.I could not shut my eyes for a single minute at night. The place was filled with screams of pain and torture. People were pleading with the guards to disentangle their arms – to be able to stand on their toes and avoid getting dislocated shoulders.The next day, they checked out my car and found a pamphlet declaring the Syrian people's rights for freedom and democracy. The guards were outraged and dragged me down the stairs, with kicks and blows with their plastic truncheons. Then they blindfolded and handcuffed me, to be handed over.At the military security branch, I was examined again and left in my underwear, handcuffed and blindfolded. I could not sleep for few nights, thanks to the soreness of my chest. I sensed that one of my ribs was broken. The guard led me to a section where detainees were huddled upon their arrival. It was wildly hot and every detainee was naked, sweating all over their bodies. Some of the detainees were military men accused of intending to defect; others were civilians accused of taking part in protests against the regime.After three days, I was summoned by the interrogator. I learned that I was accused of operating with foreign journalists. I convinced the interrogator I had nothing to do with the revolution: I was a bank director, and because of my job I had got to know few journalists. The interrogator tricked me into thinking I would be released imminently, and my treatment improved.But that did not last long, I found out some of the detainees were serving as spies on others to avoid torture, passing on every last bit of gossip. They told the interrogator I was against the regime and provoking detainees against the jailers. I was dragged to the head of the branch who, the moment his eyes fell on me, started to shout: 'Why the hell are you inciting detainees against the regime?'The next day, a vehicle arrived to take us to Palestine security branch in Damascus. I asked the guard, 'Where are we going?' He laughed and said, 'We are going to dance together.'All the detainees and protesters in Palestine security branch are considered stooges of Israel by the regime. This branch was supposed to deal with issues relevant to Palestine but the reality was, it was for hounding opponents to the regime. I saw a 14-year-old boy who had been shot in the leg at a protest against the regime. I could see that his wound had not healed. His body was covered with torture scars; burns from cigarettes butts were on his face, chest and tongue.At night, I and other detainees could listen to shouts of moaning and pain from detainees begging for mercy. The style of torture was almost the same. I was in a cell with 25 detainees. Some died under torture. After 66 days, I was taken back to a military branch in Homs to be referred to a military court. The guards were reading my ID, and found out I worked in a Saudi-French bank. They doubled the dose of beatings, as they considered France and Saudi Arabia as enemies of the regime. They put my head on the floor and began to beat me all over my body with their boots and pistols butts.At the end, the judge found me innocent and released me to flee with my wife and three children to Turkey five months ago.
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