Exiles doubt regime’s official record of deaths
▶ Government issues death certificates, but families say there’s little that adds up, writes Sunniva Rose in Beirut
His left hand is tattooed with scissors and combs, his hair is cropped short in the latest fashion and he wears deliberately ripped jeans.
“Ahmad”, 30, looks like many young male hairdressers in Lebanon. But looks can be deceiving.
Ahmad is trying hard to maintain a veneer of normality in his life. Ten days ago, one of his worst fears was confirmed. He was told his older brother “Moustafa” died in Damascus in July 2013.
The news, after years of uncertainty, came a few months after Ahmad’s release from a Lebanese prison, where he served a four-year sentence for drug trafficking – a charge he denies – and his divorce.
The experience, Ahmad says, has made him fearless.
“That’s why I’m talking to you,” he says, sitting in the tent he shares with his brother and sister-in-law and her three children in a refugee camp in Bar Elias, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Many Syrians living in the Bekaa have recently been told of a relative’s death in prison. Most are reluctant to speak about the matter because they fear retribution against their relatives who remain in Syria.
About 1.5 million Syrians live in Lebanon, local authorities say, but fewer than a million are officially registered with the UN refugee agency.
“In my heart, I can’t believe my brother is actually dead,” Ahmad says, scrolling on his phone through the only three pictures he has of his sibling.
“They just told us that so that we would stop asking.”
Despite their doubts the sense of grief has enveloped them, with the family adding condolence messages to those pictures.
“May God bless him,” and “Waiting has killed us,” two of them read.
One picture features Moustafa posing with his baby son and what seems to be the muzzle of a Kalashnikov rifle near his face.
The weapon is a visual reminder of how the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has played a part in the family’s loss.
Ahmad, who fled his country in April 2011 to avoid conscription, says Moustafa “joined peaceful demonstrations at first but took up arms after the government destroyed our homes”.
Moustafa was arrested with three friends in April 2012 by vigilantes in the village of Kafr Abad, just north of his home city Homs, which fell early to rebel forces.
All four men were handed over to Syrian security services by their captors. Ahmad believes that all of them were executed by firing squad on terrorism charges.
The Al Assad government started issuing death certificates in April, says Fadel Abdul Ghany, founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
To date, 790 death certificates have been handed out, including for nine children and one woman. This figure is not to be confused with the thousands of cases of death by torture in Syrian prisons since the beginning of the uprising, said Mr Abdul Ghany. Hearing the news, Ahmad’s sister, who lives in Syria, went to the authorities to question her brother’s fate.
She was given a certificate that details his date of birth, the date of his death, and the names of his parents.
But it gives no indication as to how Moustafa died, and his family have not been given his body.
“I don’t believe in his date of death,” Ahmad says. “Some prisoners who were released in 2014 told us they saw him and that he was still alive.”
In some cases, families have been told by government employees that their relatives died of disease or medical conditions.
“They told the lawyer who picked up his death certificate that my brother died of a heart attack,” says Tarek Shorbaji, who lives in Marseille, France.
His brother, Mazen Shorbaji, took part in peaceful protests in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, before being arrested in May 2011. He was released then arrested again in August.
Mazen was recently officially recorded as having died on January 15, 2013. Like Ahmad, Mr Shorbaji clings to the hope that his brother is still alive.
“We heard from a fellow detainee released just four months ago that Mazen is in good health,” he says.
According to Ines Osman, legal officer at Geneva-based human rights group Alkarama, the reason for death certificates being issued should not be doubted.
“The strategy is clear. The authorities are avoiding any recognition of their responsibility by not mentioning the real cause of death. They want to avoid being held accountable.”
The government “wants to prepare for transition by closing the files of the missing as well as detainees”.
“This is a way of saying, ‘We have dealt with the issue, let’s move on now’,” Ms Osman says.
“However, as long as these families are not handed their relatives’ bodies and informed of the circumstances of their deaths, under international law, this in no way means that the case is clarified. They remain victims of enforced disappearance.”
Ahmad fears for his other brother still in prison in Syria. He was arrested solely for being a relative of Moustafa. The family was asked to pay a bribe of about $9,000 (Dh33,000) to get him out.
“We couldn’t afford it,” Ahmad says. “All we know is that he is still alive and in Adra prison.”
Mr Al Assad is increasingly perceived to have won the war and Lebanese authorities have been pushing hard for refugees to go home. Last month, Lebanon said it was ready to work with Russia to co-ordinate their repatriation.
“How could they return home after learning that their relatives died in prison?” Mr Shorbaji says. “It’s a new form of terrorism. The regime gives us a piece of paper, says that they killed our brother and we can’t do anything about it.”
Ahmad says it is unthinkable for him to go home.
“The regime would immediately take me to prison or forcibly conscript me in the army,” he says.
“I would rather die in Lebanon than in Syria”.
The regime would take me to prison or conscript me in the army. I would rather die in Lebanon than in Syria AHMAD Syrian refugee