Children’s school uniforms hung on the door. Their academic workbooks lay on their desks. Toys covered in dust were still sitting on the floor.
That’s how Naila Al-Abbasi found her sister Rania’s apartment in Syria, nearly 12 years after she was detained alongside her six children and thrust into the former regime’s secret network of prisons and detention facilities.
Al-Abbasi had travelled from Saudi Arabia to visit the home in Dummar Project, an affluent neighbourhood northwest of the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Feb. 25.
“The smell of murder fills the house. The walls and curtains sad as if they were mourning their separation,” Al-Abbasi posted on Instagram.
She found every corner covered with dirt. The carcasses of birds who flew into the home were scattered on the floor.
It was once a bright and busy home to six children: Dima, 13; Entisar, 12; Najah, 11; Alaa, 8; Ahmed, 6; and Layan, 1.
For years, Hassan Al-Abbasi, Rania’s brother, has been demanding information on their whereabouts.
He has actively searched for the children following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad’s government last December. But his calls have gone unanswered, with no word on the family’s fate since March 2013.
“The situation is very difficult, because none of the children have turned up and it was the first time our family has entered the home in 12 years,” Hassan told CBC News from Ottawa, where he lives with his wife and children.
“It was very painful.”
Children likely transferred to orphanages
On March 9, 2013, members of Assad’s military intelligence arrested Rania Al-Abbasi’s husband, Abdul Rahman Yasin, in their home, before returning to loot all the gold and money, seize three cars, computers and mobile phones, along with passports and ownership documents of their properties and Al-Abbasi’s dental clinic.
Two days later, intelligence members returned to arrest Al-Abbasi, along with her six children and secretary Majdoline Al-Qady, who happened to be with them at the time.
The parents were accused of providing humanitarian assistance to those in need during the Syrian revolution, which erupted in March 2011.
Al-Abbasi’s case quickly became one of the most prominent in Syria, highlighting the issue of disappeared detainees — both parents and children.
Hassan believes the children likely remained with Rania in detention facilities, according to other detainees’ reports, before possibly being transferred to orphanages or child-care facilities and stripped of their identities and family origins. But it has been impossible to verify without access to the organizations’ documents.
The disappearance of complete families is one of the widespread atrocities committed during Assad’s brutal rule.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights said it received reports of this practice several years ago, and that it allegedly involved institutions such as the SOS Children’s Villages Syria.
In a statement to CBC News on Feb. 25, the organization said it “acknowledges concerns about children placed in care organizations, including SOS Children’s Villages Syria, by the former government.”
“During the war, many children were unnecessarily separated from their families and placed in alternative care services by the authorities without proper documentation of their origins.”
Arresting children, families ‘systematic’
Hassan said his family paid thousands of dollars to prison officials and members involved in these operations for any information on Rania and her family, but each time they would be left with unverifiable information and no real knowledge of their whereabouts.
He said the kids’ paternal aunt visited a Syrian detention facility in 2013 to request the children’s release in the months following their detainment. The aunt was subsequently detained for three months.
“Arresting children and families was systematic. The regime could have returned the children to their relatives, but instead they threatened to arrest them as well if they speak out,” Hassan said.
He said the family hired a lawyer to look into orphanages in 2022 after learning the regime was placing children of those detained or killed in their prisons. That did not provide any answers, either.
In the following years, Hassan was told by a worker at one of the orphanages that he recognized four of the six children although their names had been changed. Despite attempts to reach them, Hassan was unable to verify that.
“These children grew up in our home … if you killed them, send us any photos, at least we will know that they were killed,” Hassan, appealing to those involved in the former regime’s operations.
At least 3,700 children disappeared
The Syrian Network for Human Rights says that verified lists show roughly 3,700 children were forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime since 2011, though many suggest the number is much higher — more than 10,000.
In late January, SNHR called on the transitional Syrian government to conduct an “immediate and comprehensive” investigation into all of the organizations that received children from the former regime.
“Many relatives think that the families that were detained — the child, the mom and dad — that the regime killed [all of] them … but there are so many children in these organizations,” Hassan said.
After the exile of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Hosni Korno says he has no hope that his four sons, who were arrested at the height of the Arab Spring in 2013, are still alive.
SOS Children’s Villages said that under new management changes, it began accepting only children with documentation in 2018.
“We regret the untenable situation we found ourselves in when receiving the children and unequivocally disapprove of such practices, as children should never be separated from their families unless it is in their best interest,” the organization said in the statement.
Rania Al-Abbasi’s fate remains unknown, along with that of hundreds of thousands of other detainees in Assad’s prisons. Mass graves were uncovered after the fall of the Assad regime, but it could take years to identify the remains.
Father believed killed after month in custody
Hassan said the family believes his brother-in-law was tortured and killed roughly a month after he was detained. They came to this conclusion after recognizing Abdul Rahman Yasin in one of the 53,000 photos shared by a Syrian military police defector dubbed “Caesar” for smuggling the photos out of Syria in an effort to document the torture and brutal deaths in Assad’s prisons.
In the years following, Hassan said relatives would ask people to visit Al-Abbasi and Yasin’s home to check in on it and see what was left behind. But they were too afraid it was still being monitored or inhabited by intelligence officers.
Hassan said the greater concern for his family is that the children may not be in orphanages or even in the country.
“We have faith. If they died, then they are martyrs. And if they didn’t die, then we are continuing to search for them,” he said.
“This is one catastrophe out of many. Until now, we have not reached the actual extent of these crimes — we’ve reached only part of it.”
