This text accommodates graphic pictures of lifeless our bodies.
INKHIL, Syria — Mutlaq Mutlaq’s household spent practically a decade trying to find him after his arrest in 2015 however discovered nothing. 12 months after yr, they pleaded with the gatekeepers at President Bashar al-Assad’s safety branches and prisons. When Assad was toppled a yr in the past, they combed Syria’s mass graves.
Lastly, {a photograph} supplied some horrible readability about his destiny. An artifact of a brutal state’s forms, the photograph confirmed Mutlaq, in excessive decision, bare and bearing indicators of torture. His title, in inexperienced marker, was scrawled on his abdomen, above a brilliant crimson bloodstain on his hip. His household’s lengthy search had been in useless, the {photograph}’s metadata indicated. Mutlaq had died simply months after his arrest.
The image is a part of an enormous trove containing greater than 70,000 pictures taken by Syrian army police photographers who recorded deaths largely between 2015 and 2024 — years that encompassed the peak of the Syrian civil struggle. Included are these of 10,212 individuals who died in detention or after they had been transferred from detention to army hospitals.
A graphic exhibiting Syrians who died in detention or after they had been transferred to army hospitals
The trove is bigger than an earlier cache of pictures referred to as the Caesar Recordsdata that was made public in 2014 and confirmed in grisly element the torture and killing that occurred in Assad’s detention community.
The brand new trove was obtained by German public broadcaster NDR and shared in October with the Worldwide Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and companion organizations, together with The Washington Publish, which examined the recordsdata. The gathering contains greater than 30,000 photographs of the lifeless detainees, many taken from a number of angles.
Just like the Caesar cache, the brand new images had been leaked by a former army officer — on this case, a colonel who headed the proof preservation unit of the army police in Damascus, in accordance with NDR, which mentioned the colonel shared the recordsdata by means of intermediaries and did so on the situation that he not be recognized. The Publish was capable of affirm the authenticity of a number of of the images with the family members of these killed, and printed two pictures from the trove after acquiring consent from the victims’ households.
Documented torture and killings in Assad’s detention community
The brand new images exhibit that the 2014 disclosure — which made international headlines, contributed to struggle crimes convictions in Germany and led to sanctions towards the Assad regime in the USA — did nothing to interrupt the Syrian state’s ghastly routines: its industrial-scale arrest, torture and killing of opponents and others, and the obsessive documentation of horrors by a regime that apparently felt it had little to worry.
The victims within the pictures are overwhelmingly male, some aged and a few who look like youngsters. Scores of victims are withered to the bone. Among the many lifeless are at the very least just a few ladies, together with one who died in March 2024, in accordance with the metadata, proven coated in bandages, with large wounds on her again and legs.
One {photograph} exhibits an toddler who died in 2017, swaddled in a inexperienced blanket, mentioned in a caption to be the son of a feminine detainee within the infamous Department 235, a military-intelligence-run detention middle often known as the Palestine Department.
Because it continued to vanish and kill folks on a panoramic scale, Assad’s authorities felt “comfy,” mentioned Anwar al-Bunni, a outstanding Syrian human rights lawyer who hung out in Assad’s prisons and heads the Germany-based Syrian Middle for Authorized Research and Analysis, which additionally obtained the brand new trove of images. On the time the images had been taken, “there may be no person who can think about there will likely be some accountability for the regime.” From the president to low-ranking safety officers, Syria’s legal guidelines gave them “full immunity,” Bunni mentioned.
The pictures reveal “extra torture than the primary Caesar file,” he mentioned. The brand new images, together with sufferer testimonies, additionally point out that the dimensions of repression could have intensified, at the very least for a time.
The amount of images within the trove is biggest within the earlier years, across the interval Mutlaq was arrested, between 2015 and 2017, when greater than 7,000 of the victims had been photographed — coinciding with a surge in violence in the course of the civil struggle, spurred by insurgent offensives and Russia’s army intervention on behalf of Assad’s authorities.
For the yr 2024, which ended with Assad’s ouster in December by insurgent teams led by present President Ahmed al-Sharaa, simply over 100 detainee photographs are contained within the archive. On the time, Assad’s regime was at its weakest, struggling below worldwide sanctions and dealing with a lack of assist from longtime allies such because the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, which was locked in a struggle with Israel.
If fewer Syrians had been killed in detention that yr, the explanations they ended up there have been no much less capricious. The household of Abdul-Rahman Safaf, a 30-year-old graduate scholar who died in detention after he was arrested at his house, mentioned they may not fathom why he was taken into custody.
The household was made to signal a doc saying they might not protest or search revenge for Abdul-Rahman’s loss of life. They needed to pay $300 for an ambulance to drive his physique from Damascus, the capital, to their house in Hama, a three-hour drive north.
“I do know my son didn’t do something,” mentioned Suheib Safaf, his father, including that he would have despatched Abdul-Rahman overseas instantly if he had thought he was combined up in one thing.
“I feel they broke his neck.”
Detained for no believable purpose
The colonel who leaked the photographs informed NDR that almost all of the victims who died in detention had been photographed on the Harasta army hospital, a facility northeast of Damascus. “We don’t know the place they died,” he added. Roughly half of the huge archive has nothing to do with detainees and contains pictures of army personnel who died in accidents or from different causes resembling suicide.
A few of the photographs of the detainees could have been taken elsewhere. Many pictures present victims mendacity bare on the ground of container vans with metal flooring.
In a single set of photographs, from 2015, the our bodies of badly emaciated victims are strewn round a truck, some with names scrawled on their stomachs, and others unidentified. An internet tribute to one of many victims within the truck mentioned he had died in Sednaya, a infamous army jail north of Damascus. (Such tributes had been frequent; details about the deaths of detainees typically leaked to households earlier than Assad was toppled and appeared in on-line shops after he was gone.)
Seen on the sting of many images are ft, some sporting white boots or with footwear wrapped in medical gauze, belonging maybe to medical workers, photographers, safety personnel or gravediggers.
Through the interval mirrored within the recordsdata, many detainees had been stored for no believable purpose, their households mentioned, some swept up in safety dragnets, at checkpoints or as a result of they got here from a city thought-about rebellious. Many had been interrogated regardless of having no data, Bunni mentioned. The authorities, the truth is, did “not want data.”
By now, practically a yr after Assad fled to Russia and rebels emptied his prisons, Syrians searching for relations within the huge detention community typically know whether or not they’re alive or lifeless, Bunni mentioned. However the pictures nonetheless seem to comprise vital clues ought to Syria start to noticeably reckon with the crimes of the Assad period — a course of that human rights teams say has barely begun.
It was unclear whether or not Syrian prosecutors or households looking for the destiny of family members may have entry to all the images. The colonel who leaked them mentioned he eliminated the laborious drive containing the pictures from the army police headquarters. He didn’t say whether or not he deliberate at hand it over to Syria’s new authorities.
Through the Assad years, the victims’ photographs had been despatched repeatedly to the army judiciary, a part of a authorized course of that he mentioned was meant to confer “legitimacy” on the deaths. After Assad’s ouster, although, recordsdata and different proof had been misplaced as safety branches and courts had been looted or burned.
Syria’s Nationwide Fee for Lacking Individuals didn’t reply to questions on whether or not it was conscious of or had entry to the trove. “This all must be shared with the Syrian authorities, for judicial and different causes,” mentioned Zahra al-Barazi, deputy head of Syria’s official Transitional Justice Fee.
NDR shared 1,500 names of detainees extracted from the photograph trove, together with a separate cache of Assad-era intelligence recordsdata, with two Syrian nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations Impartial Establishment on Lacking Individuals in Syria.
One other copy of the trove was given to the German federal public prosecutor, which has beforehand gained convictions towards Syrian officers accused of atrocities.
Grabbed from a restaurant
Mutlaq Mutlaq’s brother Bassem stared on the photograph for a very long time when Publish journalists confirmed it to him late final month. Two of Mutlaq’s three sons sat close by. The household had beforehand seen what they thought was a photograph of Mutlaq’s physique, despatched to them by somebody after the autumn of Assad’s authorities, but it surely was not him.
This one confirmed uncooked scars round Mutlaq’s neck, deep gashes above his left eye, some form of wound on one among his arms and his bare physique on a metal ground. it, one of many sons teared up. Bassem mentioned he acknowledged his brother from his arms. These had been his brother’s thumbs, he mentioned.
Mutlaq got here from Inkhil, in Syria’s southern Daraa province, and had moved to Damascus together with his household in 2011 quickly after the rebellion towards Assad’s authorities started. He labored at a restaurant known as al-Asees, positioned in a big outside fruit and vegetable market, the place on the time many different males from Inkhil labored.
Someday in February 2015, as Mutlaq was making falafel sandwiches, safety officers confirmed up exterior the restaurant. Not lengthy earlier than, rebels had attacked a authorities checkpoint close to Inkhil, and safety forces had been rounding up males from the city, restaurant staff mentioned. The officers arrested Mutlaq’s boss, Muhannad al-Humaid.
“What’s occurring?” Mutlaq requested, drawing their consideration, Humaid recounted in an interview.
“Take that one,” one among them mentioned, and grabbed Mutlaq as properly.
The beatings began instantly as the 2 males, together with others who labored within the vegetable market, had been bundled right into a van, Humaid mentioned. The abuse continued at a army intelligence detention middle, the place they had been interrogated whereas blindfolded and stripped to their underwear, then subjected to completely different torture strategies with harmless names like “the tire” and “the chair.”
Humaid was finally launched just a few years later, however solely after his household paid the equal of $26,000 in a bribe to a choose.
Mutlaq’s mom, Miriam, spent years looking for him, visiting courts and detention facilities. “Typically they are saying nothing, typically he’s wonderful, typically they are saying he’s lifeless, typically they are saying he’s alive,” Bassem recalled. “One man leveled with us. He was a member of parliament. We paid him cash.”
The parliament member informed them Mutlaq was lifeless. However Miriam nonetheless didn’t consider it.
After Assad was ousted and the prisons emptied, she visited mass graves, together with one in Najha, exterior Damascus, in March. There, she briefly spoke to a crew of Publish journalists.
“I’m exhausted,” she informed them.
Quickly to be married
Abdul-Rahman Safaf’s household didn’t spend years trying to find him. They collected his physique two months after he was arrested.
When he was detained in June 2024, Safaf was finding out for his grasp’s diploma in IT and dealing, promoting clothes cloth. He was engaged to be married, the date set for July. One night, his father got here house and located army intelligence officers posted downstairs, his household mentioned.
“We all know Abdul-Rahman is right here. We would like him,” the daddy quoted an officer as saying. Safaf was upstairs, getting dressed to go see his fiancée. The officers didn’t say why he was wished. As they led him away, they tried to reassure his household, they mentioned. “We is not going to hold him late.”
As a substitute, Safaf moved shortly by means of the dreaded detention community, from the army police headquarters in Damascus to the Palestine Department. One individual informed the household he was wished for terrorism and can be placed on trial. “Others mentioned it’s not an enormous deal, he will likely be launched in a month,” his youthful brother Abdelkhalaq mentioned. “Everybody wished cash.”
Their father, Suheib, had reserved a corridor for Abdul-Rahman’s marriage ceremony within the metropolis of Hama, the place they lived. “Each month, we postponed it,” he mentioned.
In early August, they heard that Safaf can be launched. The household gathered the family members to welcome him house. They went to Tishreen army hospital in Damascus and had been informed he was not there. Then they went to Harasta army hospital, the place a health care provider, after initially saying Safaf was not there both, took pity on the household and informed them that they had his physique.
Officers finally informed the household that Safaf had died on the Tishreen hospital in August. They weren’t allowed to gather his physique till two weeks later. Once they introduced him house to bury him, the household observed some scars, however they weren’t as outstanding as those who had been later seen within the photograph from the newly disclosed army archive, together with gashes round his wrists.
In an interview, Safaf’s brothers questioned whether or not he had been hung by his wrists, a typical torture methodology, referred to in intelligence paperwork as hanging on “the grid.” Had his storage in a morgue fridge, for weeks, maybe diminished his scars?
A army police report, launched to his household, supplied no readability. It didn’t say why he was arrested. It didn’t say a lot about how he died.
Safaf’s “coronary heart and respiration stopped,” it merely mentioned.
About this story
Musawy reported from Berlin. Louisa Loveluck in Najha, Syria, and Volkmar Kabisch and Sebastian Pittelkow in Berlin contributed to this report. ICIJ is a nonprofit information outlet primarily based in Washington and a world community of investigative reporters.
Graphics by Artur Galocha and Álvaro Valiño. Design by Emily Wright. Enhancing by Alan Sipress, Adrián Blanco Ramos, Olivier Laurent, Virginia Singarayar and Joe Moore. Copy modifying by Vanessa Larson.
