‘Assad wants them to die of coronavirus,’ say families of Syria’s missing

The families of people missing in Syria’s prison system say they fear they will never see their loved ones again because of the spread of coronavirus, as a landmark trial over state-sponsored torture gets under way.

It is estimated that between 75,000 and more than 200,000 people are missing in Syria, with many thought to be either dead or forcibly detained.

Despite appeals from groups such as Amnesty International, families said little was being done to hold the regime to account and that the international community has failed to protect the Syrian people.

It came as two former Syrian intelligence officers appeared in a German court on Thursday, charged with crimes against humanity for the treatment of detainees.

Defendants Anwar Raslan and Eyad Al Gharib are accused of multiple counts of murder, rape and torture

While the case offers some hope, it is being held on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity, as the International Criminal Court is hamstrung by vetoes from Russia and China.

“It is not just [our family members] who are being tortured. We are being tortured, too,” said Garam Zarim, whose four uncles went missing after being detained by the regime in 2013.

The project manager, 30, originally from the north-eastern city of Latakia but now living in southern Turkey, said that with no news of her uncles’ whereabouts and unable to confirm their deaths to hold a funeral, the lack of closure cast a long shadow over her entire family.

The wife of one uncle tried to sell her home for the $2,000 (Dh7,345) needed to bribe prison guards for information.

Paying for news of a friend or relative is common among those who can scrape together the cash, said Ms Zarim, but that is not easy in a country stricken by almost a decade of war and the economic problems that go with it.

“I have now heard rumours that coronavirus is in Deraa jail. There are as many as 50 people per cell there and he [President Bashar Al Assad] wants them to die.”

Umm Muhammad, 45, a farmer who now lives in southern Turkey’s Hatay province, was detained for six months in 2013 alongside two of her sons. She has not seen or heard of them since.

“I underwent the most severe torture, causing anxiety and extreme fear,” she said. “I was subjected to beatings that led to a severe nervous breakdown and was locked up in a prison cell with 60 other women.

“We shared one bathroom in the cell and drank polluted water from the toilet. The food they gave us was rotten and spoiled. There was no soap in the bathroom. Cleansing hygiene was very poor. It was indescribable.”

Umm Muhammad said she is now especially worried about her sons and other detainees because not only is the coronavirus highly contagious and conditions in prison dire, the lockdown measures in place to combat the spread of the disease mean that it is almost impossible to continue her search for them.

“If one inmate gets infected, it will be passed on to all the others and cause a humanitarian disaster,” she said.

For some families, the pain of not knowing is worsened by inaccurate information. Ms Zarim said that although the Syrian government has pronounced one of her uncles dead, the family do not believe it is true.

Amal Alnasin is chief executive of Amal’s Healing and Advocacy Centre in Hatay, southern Turkey, which represents the families of Syria’s missing people.

“Parents do not trust the information handed to them by civil departments, which should be a trustworthy source. Some people are being released alive when their civil documents say they are dead,” she said.

Families said they not only worried that the Syrian regime will not protect their loved ones – who are mostly held under loosely defined and politically motivated charges – from the pandemic, but that it was a convenient excuse for a regime with many unexplained deaths to account for.

“The mothers of the martyrs can sleep while the mothers of the detained and the missing cannot,” Ms Alnasin said.

Families say that the international community has failed to protect the Syrian people