‘We think he died just before regime collapsed’: Syrians scour morgues full of tortured bodies
It has been 10 years since Morhaf Safi, a young Syrian man, left home to buy a suit for his wedding and never came back.
Ten years since his family in the capital, Damascus, have had any contact with him. Ten years since his older brother, Abdulsafer, 38, last saw his face.
Then on Tuesday, just days after the stunning overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime, a friend texted Abdulsafer a photo of a mutilated body: a face slashed, mouth twisted, eyes hollow and bruised.
“My friend asked if this was my brother,” Abdulsafer says through tears, clutching the photo on his phone. It was taken inside Harasta, a military hospital in the capital. “We think he died just a few days before the regime’s collapse.”
Abdulsafer was told that at least 35 bodies, all showing signs of torture, had been found in a refrigerated room inside the hospital – including, possibly, that of his beloved brother.
Rebels told reporters they had received a tip from hospital staff about corpses being dumped there, and had subsequently moved the bodies to central Damascus for families to identify.
Outside the morgue, photos of the disfigured bodies are plastered on the walls, and desperate families scour them in the dark using the lights on their mobile phones.
Among the images, friends identify what they believe to be the body of Mazen al-Hamada, one of Syria’s most prominent activists, who became a global voice against the Assad regime’s use of torture after he endured a year of brutal physical, sexual, and psychological abuse in Sednaya.
Released in 2013, and after taking refuge in the Netherlands, he shared his harrowing story with the world. For some inexplicable reason, he decided to return to Damascus in early 2020. He hasn’t been heard from since.
Inside the morgue, people move from body to body, examining remains that litter the floor in various stages of decay. Scribbled on some of the blood-smeared body bags are notes about where the bodies were found and in what circumstances.
“To this day, we don’t know why my brother was imprisoned,” Abdulsafer says as he braces himself to take a look inside. “We knew he was being held in the Political Security Branch, but then he was transferred to another prison and we lost all contact with him.”
Behind him, a woman called Om Hamza, who is searching for her brother and two sons-in-law who have been missing for years, says he is not alone.
“Every household in Syria has three or four missing people,” she adds. “It is our nightmare.”
Desperate relatives have been doing whatever they can – camping in the grounds of Syria’s most notorious prison, as well as searching the halls of overflowing hospitals and morgues – to find those who disappeared during the reign of the now deposed autocrat.
