Children’s school uniforms hung on the door. Her academic workbooks were on their desks. Toys covered with dust were still on the floor.
For example, Naila al-Abbasi found her sister Rania’s apartment in Syria, almost 12 years after she was arrested with her six children and was joined into the secret network of prisons and prison for the former regime.
Al-Abbasi traveled from Saudi Arabia on February 25 to visit the house in Dummar Project, a wealthy quarter northwest of the Syrian capital Damascus.
“The smell of murder fills the house. The walls and curtains are sad as if they were mourning their separation,” said Al-Abbasi on Instagram.
She found every corner covered with dirt. The cadavers of birds that flew into the house were scattered on the floor.
It was once a bright and busy home for six children: dima, 13; Entisar, 12; Najah, 11; Alaa, 8; Ahmed, 6; and layan, 1.
Hassan Al-Abbasi, Rania’s brother, has been asking information about her whereabouts for years.
He actively searched for the children after having followed the BASHAR al-Assad government’s fall last December last December. But his calls have remained unanswered, without the family’s fate since March 2013 has not been a word.
“The situation is very difficult because none of the children appeared and it was the first time that our family has entered the house for 12 years,” Hassan told CBC News from Ottawa, where he lives with his wife and children.
“It was very painful.”
Children who are probably transferred to orphanages
On March 9, 2013, members of Assad’s military secret service Rania al-Abbase husband Abdul Rahman Yasin arrested in her house before returning to loot all gold and money, three cars, computers and mobile phones as well as passes and owner documents of their properties and al-abbasi’s dental clinic.
Two days later, intelligence members returned with their six children and secretary Majdoline al-Qady, who were with them at the time, al-Abbasi.
The parents were accused during the Syrian Revolution, which broke out in March 2011, to have provided humanitarian aid for the needy.
Al-Abbasis Fall quickly became one of the best known in Syria and raised the subject of disappeared prisoners-Sowohl parents and child-faith.
Hassan believes that according to other prisoners, the children have stayed in detention centers in detention centers before they may be transferred to orphanage or childcare facilities and their identity and their origins are robbed in the family. However, it was impossible to check without access to the organizations’ documents.
The disappearance of complete families is one of the widespread atrocities that are committed during the brutal rule of Assad.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights said it received reports on this practice a few years ago and supposedly institutions such as the SOS Children’s Villages Syria.
In A opinion In CBC News on February 25, the organization said “recognizes the concerns about children in nursing hearings, including the SOS Children’s Villages, by the former government”.
“During the war, many children were unnecessarily separated from their families and brought into alternative care services by the authorities without proper documentation of their origins.”
Children arrested, families “systematic”
Hassan said his family paid thousands of dollars to prison officers and members who are involved in these operations to obtain information about Rania and her family, but every time they had verifiable information and no real knowledge of their place of residence.
He said that the children’s children’s fathers visited a Syrian prison in 2013 to apply for the release of the children in the months after their detention. The aunt was then arrested for three months.
“Children and families were systematic. The regime could have returned the children to their relatives, but instead they threatened to arrest them when they speak,” said Hassan.
He said the family commissioned a lawyer to look at orphanage in 2022 after learning that the regime ceased children from the prisoners held or killed in their prisons. That also provided no answers.
In the following years, Hassan was told by a worker in one of the orphanages that he recognized four of the six children Although their names had been changed. Despite the attempts to achieve them, Hassan could not check this.
“These children grew up in our house … If you killed them, send us any photos, at least we know that they were killed,” Hassan appealed to those who are involved in the operations of the former regime.
At least 3,700 children disappeared
The Syrian Network for Human Rights says that verified lists have been violently disappeared from the Assad regime since 2011, although many suggest that the number is much higher – more than 10,000.
At the end of January, Snhr asked the transition -Syrian government to carry out an “immediate and comprehensive” examination of all organizations that children received from the former regime.
“Many relatives believe that the families who have been imprisoned – the child, mother and father – that the regime killed them … but there are so many children in these organizations,” said Hassan.
According to the exile of the former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hosni Korno says that he has no hope that his four sons, who were arrested in 2013 at the climax of the Arab Spring, were still alive.
SOS Children’s villages said that with new changes in management, it started to only accept children with documentation in 2018.
“We regret the unsustainable situation in which we were in the received children and clearly disapproves such practices, since children should never be separated from their families, unless this is in their best interest,” said the organization in the explanation.
The fate of Rania al-Abbasi is unknown together with that of hundreds of thousands of other prisoners in Assad’s prisons. Mass graves were exposed after the fall of the Assad regime, but it could take years for the remains.
Father believed to be killed in custody after month
Hassan said the family believed that his brother -in -law was tortured and killed about a month after his detention. They came to this conclusion, after they had recognized Abdul Rahman Yasin in one of the 53,000 photos that were shared by a Syrian military police overhaul called “Caesar” to smuggle the photos from Syria in order to document the torture and brutal deaths in Assad’s prisons.
In the following years, Hassan said relatives would ask people to visit Al-Abbasi and Yasin’s house in order to look and see what was left behind. But they were too afraid that it was still monitored or inhabited by secret service officers.
Hassan said the greater concern for his family was that the children may not be in orphanage or even in the country.
“We believe. If you died, you are martyr. And if you don’t die, we will continue to look for you,” he said.
“This is a catastrophe of many. So far we have not achieved the actual extent of these crimes – we have only reached part of it.”
