Posters have covered public buildings and monuments in Damascus, including the Marjeh Square monument [Getty]
Posters have gone up all over the Syrian capital Damascus displaying the names and pictures of missing and forcibly disappeared people detained by the Assad regime and pleading for information.
They have covered walls and landmark buildings, such as the Umayyad Mosque, the Hejaz Railway Station, as well as Marjeh Square in a tragic spectacle amid the celebratory atmosphere in Damascus following the fall of the Assad regime.
Syria’s interim authorities have announced that all surviving prisoners had been liberated from the regime’s jails but family members of the disappeared cling on to desperate hope that their loved ones may be alive.
The posters include a phone number which those with information can call.
They bear testament to the sheer number of people detained, tortured, executed, and forcibly disappeared by Syria’s former regime.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that 96,321 people were forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime, including 2,329 children and 5,742 women. It has also recorded the deaths of 15,102 people under torture, including 190 children and 95 women.
The New Arab’s affiliate Syria TV said that most of the families who put up pictures were from the provinces of Raqqa, Al-Hasakah, and Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria and had not had any definitive news about the fate of their loved ones for over 13 years.
Most of the family members who Syria TV spoke to said that their loved ones were in Sednaya Prison, which was captured by rebels when the Assad regime fell on 8 December 2024.
They released the remaining prisoners from the prison, which was described as a “human slaughterhouse” due to the horrific conditions and extreme torture there.
Hundreds of relatives desperately searched the prison for their loved ones amid reports that there were underground cells which had not been excavated, but rescue workers said there were no further surviving prisoners there.
Umm Mohammed, who came from Hasakah province in northeastern Syria told Syria TV that her son Mahmoud had been missing since 2013.
She had heard he had been taken to the notorious Air Force Intelligence prison then transferred to Sednaya.
In tears, she told Syria TV that she wanted to know if her son was alive or dead, saying there may be secret prisons not reached by Syrian authorities.
She added that her brother Othman had also disappeared in Damascus in 2014, with his fate unknown.