NADIA AL-BUKAI Just before we begin, we wanted to let you know that this podcast contains some descriptions of physical and psychological violence. Please use discretion.
DIAB SERRIH In Syria, you could be prosecuted for not reporting a lost ID card. Also, losing your ID card in Syria means you will eventually be summoned to an intelligence branch.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Every road in Assad's Syria leads to his security services in one way or another, and everyone is searching for a way to avoid encountering those infamous people.
After 2011, the regime planted security checkpoints at entries and exits of cities and towns across the country, as well as inside the cities, so it's almost impossible for people to move around without passing through a checkpoint. Thousands and thousands of people have been and continue to be arrested and disappeared at such checkpoints. Often, they are detained based on the area they're from, their family name, or even because of information found on their mobile phone, suggesting they're opponents of Assad.
Diab is right. Even losing your ID card can be very dangerous when you have to pass through a checkpoint.
From Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, this is Behind the Sun. I'm Nadia al-Bukai.
After Diab left Syria in 2012, he went to Italy. It was supposed to be his new home away from Syria after his second arrest. But after forty-five days in Europe, he decided to go back to Syria.
DIAB SERRIH I returned, because I felt like I didn't have to stay in Europe. The regime was about to fall, and I didn't want to miss that. I didn't want to miss the joy of seeing Bashar al-Assad's regime falling apart. I couldn't imagine that moment without me being there in the street. It was impossible to imagine myself spending all of those years in the regime's presence, five years in Sednaya, and one year of the revolution that was full of war. I wasn't just relaxing with my family. I wasn't just sitting and watching. Of course, I couldn't let this moment pass me by. I felt that events like that only happened once in all of history.
NADIA AL-BUKAI But when he got back, he had some trouble. Diab had lost his ID card while in Italy and had to report that in a police station upon his arrival in Syria. That meant another interrogation by the intelligence services, and Diab couldn't just depend on luck this time.
DIAB SERRIH I consulted a guy I knew in the political intelligence branch who wanted to defect from the regime and was helping the revolution. He used to pass information to protestors. So, I asked this man to check if it was okay to tell the police that I had lost my ID in Damascus. After two days, he called back and told me, "Delete me from your life. Don't just delete my phone number, and get the hell out of the country."
I just wanted to understand what was going on, but he hung up. So, I went and spent the night at my sister's house, and I decided to leave for Lebanon the next day. There was a taxi driver I used to travel with. He wasn't there at the time. He was in Beirut. I decided I wouldn't even wait for him. I'd go immediately.
NADIA AL-BUKAI It was just few days after Diab got back to Syria. He took the difficult decision to flee once more. His dream of witnessing the victory of the revolution from inside his country was crushed by the fear of being sent behind the sun again. He knew well the grave risks of putting himself at the mercy of Assad's intelligence. He just couldn't put himself or his family through the horrific experience of enforced disappearance again.
GHUFRAN KHULANI Detention for regime, it's a way to control people. So, they always have this system, even before the revolution. For me, I found that detention is the most hardest one on families to use. They punish all the family and they make us feel the pain with the detainees himself. All his family, children, sisters, and mothers.
This kind of pain never stop. It's every day. You cannot stop thinking about them, because you know what happening inside. And the regime used this way always to control people, to make them silent, because the Syrian families know how much this kind of pain hard.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Ghufran's family had left their home in Darayya and moved to Damascus after Majed and Abd's arrest. The family stopped participating in the demonstrations, but were still active in helping protesters, the wounded, and the families of the disappeared. Sometimes, they donate money to buy medicine for those who were injured during the protests or they visit the families to comfort them.
In 2013, Ghufran had not yet known about the execution of her brothers, Majed and Abd, in Sednaya. The family was still looking for them. Years later, they would know that Assad's regime murdered both Majed and Abd back in January 2013.
GHUFRAN KHULANI In April 2013, regime break into our house at night and they took my desk brother Muhammad and my younger brother Bilal. We know later that the Security Branch 215 of Mukhabarat took them. That night, they start to search everything in the house. They threatened us by big kind of guns. Even my mom, she asked what they did my brother. He never answered he and he said only kind of routine searching.
All the family was terrified, and my nephews were a young child, and he was crying. They took them, and you cannot do anything. You feel very helpless. They took them by car. And also, they stole a lot of money from our house and the computers, laptops. My dad has his money from his shop. Also, they took this money.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Branch 215 is one of the most notorious Assad regime detention centres where torture and mass executions were carried out on a daily basis after the revolution. The Branch of Death is what many would call. Like most of the military intelligence branches, 215 is located inside a densely populated area in Damascus.
GHUFRAN KHULANI We know where is the place for 215, and we try to have any information. Also, we try to pay money to release him, because, 1at that time, this is branch called the Branch of Death, it has a bad reputation. We tried a lot of times, but we couldn't.
Later, we had a call that Bilal arrived to Adra Prison.
NADIA AL-BUKAI For Ghufran's family, getting that call from the last cellmate in 2014, months after Muhammad and Bilal's disappearance was very good news since their efforts to visit Majed and Abd in Sednaya seemed impossible at that time. At least they knew Bilal's whereabouts.
GHUFRAN KHULANI After dawn, we prepared ourself, me and my mom. We didn't took my dad, because my dad has heart issue and heart problems, and we don't him to be in this situation. And, sometimes, soldiers very harsh and rude. So, we went, only me and my mom. The trip usually, it's long, to Adra. It's full of checkpoint for regime. In every checkpoint, always, you have this fear maybe they will take me or my mom. So, it was difficult, because if they know more information about my sister and her activities or my brother and his activities also, they will punish us more. Because at that time, all the family still participate.
And there is also part of the road where is the kind of fighting between the regime and free army. And this is place very dangerous, because shorting from two side.
NADIA AL-BUKAI And in Adra, the prison was packed full.
RIYAD AVLAR Everywhere crowded with the prisoners. At the prison, just have to be three thousand. It's capacity, I mean. It become fifteen thousands prisoners in the end. Nowhere to – to sleep, to sit. Everywhere, crowded. Everybody screaming. It is a hard time.
NADIA AL-BUKAI On the day of Ghufran and her mother's visit.
GHUFRAN KHULANI We arrived there. I went to the kind of window. I have to take a visit card. And there, you meet a lot of mothers and families. They came from different county in Syria. A lot of simply don't have any information about their detainees.
Finally, the soldier gave me the visit card. And there was a picture. When I saw the picture for Bilal, I thought, "They are mistaken."
My mum at that time were behind me in secure. I saw Bilal before her. And when I saw Bilal, he was like a dead body and a lot of torture signs still visible. He cannot stand. He was crying. And directly, he told me, he said, "I want to tell you something important. I want to tell you that Muhammad passed away inside 215, in the branch of Mukhabarat."
And I start to shout to Bilal. "Please stop. Stop. Don't say that." I asked him if he is sure. And at that moment, my mum arrived to the place. So, both of us stopped talking. Only crying. And my mum start to cry also, because Bilal was in bad situation. He was very sick, and one of his leg was injured. My mum asked him about Muhammad.
He said, "I don't know."
We spoke, like, around ten minutes. And because he was very sick, he went inside, again. He didn't complete the visit.
All the way from Adra to Damascus, I was crying. And it's long road. I didn't sit near my mum, because I don't want her to see me crying. All the way, I was thinking about Muhammad and his wife and his baby. And they took him before his birth.
All the way to the house, I was thinking how I can see his baby and to answer his wife if she asked me, because I'm sure she will ask me what Bilal told us about Muhammad. I didn't go to the house that day. When we arrived to Damascus, I said to his wife, I said, "I'm very tired. I will sleep."
But I sleep that day. I decide to go to see Bilal again. But in this time, I want to see him without my mom. But my mum never allowed me to go there alone, because it's dangerous place.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Ghufran spent many sleepless nights planning on how to verify the information from Bilal without letting her mother know anything.
GHUFRAN KHULANI In second visit, only I had, like, short minutes or so to speak with Bilal when my mum was busy with the queue. And he said Muhammad was very sick, and they took him from the room, and all the detainees inside the room started to say that he is dead. He don't know what happened after they took Muhammad from their room. So, I don't have a lot of information.
It was heavy information. I told only my sister, Amina. I didn't tell anybody, because I'm not sure about the information and because I don't want them to apply about Abd or Majed, because already we have enough tragedy and enough stress.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Ghufran's family is one of tens of thousands who have gone through similar situations. That limbo of uncertainty is devastating to the families of the detainees. Dictators like Assad would hold the truth, because he wants to make it near impossible for anyone to be certain of anything. With little information present, Assad can control the definition of facts as much as he likes.
The other dilemma with this uncertainty is that it leaves people to anticipate the worst.
With each passing day of Assad's grip on power, all the government documents were losing their worth. The Syrian currency was in freefall, and prices were soaring. Living a normal day in Syria at that time was a luxury.
£S100,000 wasn't even enough to help my father Najah flee Syria to Lebanon in 2014, after he was released from detention in Branch 227. He had paid that amount and intelligence official to clear his name at the border. But the man was a fraud. My father was arrested again while crossing the border to Lebanon and was sent back again to detention. My mother and I had to go back to Damascus to figure out how we could get him out.
A couple of years earlier, in 2012, when Diab was trying to flee Syria without his ID, he was stopped by an intelligence checkpoint on his way to Lebanon at the bus station. They searched Diab's and his phone and found an SMS about an activity related to the revolution.
DIAB SERRIH They took me beneath the stairs of a bridge and stripped me naked. I felt miserable. Imagine yourself in the street completely naked. They surrounded me, so I couldn't escape. One guy started to ask me questions. "Where are you going? What are you going to do? Intelligence agents are on the way to take you to a security branch."
He asked me about the SMSs they've found, and I said, "It has nothing to do with the events."
He started a basic interrogation and pretended to speak over his walkie talkie. Honestly, I was devastated. I didn't know what to do. There was evidence against me. There was that message, though. However, I lied. When I wound up in the security branch this time, there would be no escape.
The words of the sympathetic political intelligence agent I'd ask about my ID were a clear indication, too, when he told me to leave the country, that this time they really had something on me and there would be no way out. And indeed, if they took me to the intelligence branch, I never would have gotten out. You probably would have found me in Caesar's photos.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR Caesar, welcome to the programme. It's not your name, and you are in disguise. How dangerous would it be if people knew who you were?
NADIA AL-BUKAI Caesar is the alias given to a defected Syrian army forensic photographer to protect his identity and life. In his only interview with Amanpour & Co. on PBS and CNN International in 2019, his face was blurred and his voice was distorted and voiceover.
When working for the Syrian officials before the revolution in 2011, he used to take images of the dead bodies inside the army, deaths that were mostly caused by injuries, accidents, or suicide. But after the revolution, he took tens of thousands of photographs of detainees killed inside Assad's detentions.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR Caesar, did you ever dare ask your superiors what was going on?
CAESAR Who doesn't live in Syria doesn't understand the situation of how much fear that existed within us. Even the pathologist had a high level, a high rank, but he was terrified of the intelligence, the intelligence officers that were with us. It was terrifying. It was not allowed for us to ask any question.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Eventually, Caesar defected and left Syria smuggling fifty-five thousand photos of approximately eleven thousand dead. More than half of them died in detention. Taken between March 2011 and August 2013, the collection that shocked the world became known as the Caesar Files.
In the images, a significant number of bodies show signs of starvation. Other injuries include burns, bruising, gashed eyes, marks indicating strangulation and signs of electrocution.
When the files were made public in 2015 by Caesar Files Group, families who were kept in the dark had to go through these horrific photos in search of their loved ones. Ghufran's brother Muhammad was in Branch 215.
GHUFRAN KHULANI It was very difficult and hard, because in beginning, I want to search for Muhammad's picture. But because you have to be very focused, because in my mind, I know maybe his body changed, his face changed, so I have to focus to notice if this picture correct. And they are horrific pictures. So, I start also to imagine Abd and Majed. And I couldn't sleep a lot of days, because I'm watching these pictures. I start to imagine what happened to these bodies before they died, how they felt, how they lost their hopes when they are waiting for us to help them. I stopped searching because it's affect me badly emotionally.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Bilal was fortunately released, and Ghufran's family sent him outside Syria. But despite the horrors, he injured inside Branch 215, he also looked for his brother's photo. He had hope that Muhammad might be still alive.
GHUFRAN KHULANI Bilal later finds the picture for Muhammad.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Going through the photos wasn't easy, but at least it gave them the truth. Yet they never told their mother and father who still didn't know anything about Muhammad's death.
GHUFRAN KHULANI When my mum speak about Muhammad and he will come back, it was kind of torture to me. Even when she told his son about how his dad will come and will play with him, her hope for that, it was difficult for me to hear that, because I know that maybe he will not come back anymore. It was very hard to hide my emotional and my feeling. So, a lot of time, I sit in my room. And I cannot face his wife and his son. I cannot make them lose hope, because I don't have certain information. Until we find the – the picture from Caesar pictures, I decide to tell his wife, because I believe her right to know the information. I decide not to tell my mum and dad, because my dad is sick and has heart problems. I don't want him also to lose hope about Majed and Abd. So, I told his wife. Only his wife, I told her what I know and why I didn't tell her before I told her that I wasn't certain about the information and only there is this picture.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Around this time, the regime had intensified the arrest campaign after Assad had the full backing of Russia. Vladimir Putin's war machines were bombing cities to the ground, enforcing thousands of families to flee their homes. Russia's intervention has helped us at state empowered with a twisted crusade against whoever refused Assad's rule. Ghufran's family eventually had to flee to Lebanon. They tried to stay close to Syria, because they were trying to locate Majed and Abd. But…
NOOR My mum in Lebanon was very sick. All of us were worried, because we left our brothers inside Syria. It was very heavy on me. I told them all the story from the beginning, how Bilal told me, how we become uncertain about the information, and why I didn't tell them from the beginning. I told them all the story. I told them about Caesar picture. It was very sad moment, because my eldest brother Muhammad, it's also like kind of a friend for my dad. He always with him in his shop, and he worked with my dad in my dad's shop. It was shocking, sad. They both were crying, my mum and dad.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Official Assad documents consider whoever opposes the regime, a terrorist, state destabiliser, or rioter. Regardless of the atrocities that the regime has been committing with the Syrian people, often, Assad loyalists say that victims brought terror to themselves. They say whoever lives safely and peacefully wouldn't be harmed by the intelligence forces. They will be fine as long as they don't get in the way of Assad's regime.
NOOR The older ones used to tell us that as long as you're away from problems, the problems will stay away from you. That was our rule number one.
NADIA AL-BUKAI This is Noor. It's not her real name. She chose to use a pseudonym in fear for the safety of her family who remain in regime areas. She's a senior woman with no history whatsoever with activism. She was what the Assad regime might call an obedient citizen. But in the end, it almost doesn't matter how obedient you try to be. Noor is just one example of how the injustice has found its way into everyone's life.
Noor got married one year after the revolution, in early 2012, and had a big wedding, as she says. She wanted to live a peaceful life as best she could. And with her desire to live a peaceful life, she bought into Assad's propaganda.
NOOR In our bubble, we couldn't open the TV on the big news like big channels like Al-Jazeera or Arabia or BBC. We couldn't. That was forbidden. We weren't getting away from problems. We were running from them. Whenever the war was getting closer, we were getting farther away from the war. We were running to another city, to another village. Every year, I remember I was moving to another house. I moved to – to about nine houses in about six or five years. Just moving. Moving. Getting away, getting away. Just like that.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Noor was hopeful and optimistic about the future. She had a baby later in 2012. And despite the constant moving, she wanted to have more children in Syria.
NOOR Then, I had another baby and 2013. But actually, he died. We were refusing the idea that we were hurt too. It's right that the bombs didn't come over me and the bombs didn't hurt me in person. But actually, the day that I lost my baby, it was the day that the airplane stroke my house. I got really, really sad, and I got really devastated. So, I lost my baby. So, I was hurt even though I was living into that bubble.
NADIA AL-BUKAI One day, in 2017, Noor's husband was kidnapped from the street. At the time, Noor was happily expecting another child.
NOOR They came in the early morning, about four o'clock. I wasn't afraid at all. I just was pregnant. Nine months.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The intelligence men arrested her husband's whole extended family as well.
NOOR What would they do with the pregnant woman and an old lady and another pregnant woman and a small bunch of nobodies? We're not important. We're not that dangerous. So, I thought, "Okay. It would be a day or two or three. Or a week. Nothing's going to happen." So, I was very brave. I wasn't afraid.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The whole family were taken to the Mezzeh Military Airport Camp, southwest of the old centre of Damascus. No matter how Noor tried to use logic with interrogators, they kept accusing her of assisting the rebels, along with her husband and the whole family. They didn't release her after a day or two as she anticipated.
NOOR I know the symptoms. I know what would happened. So, I felt it. I knew that I – I'm giving birth. I asked for an ambulance.
They told me, "We will – we will bring you an ambulance. Don't cry. Don't be afraid. We will bring you an ambulance."
I really wish I had birth in that place, in the cells, and didn't have birth in the military hospital. That was the worst part of the detention. It was very, very bad. Of course, the fear kills every cell of your brain and your body, and actually paralyse, your body, your thoughts, your everything. I was afraid. I was really afraid that I would die. And they didn't treat me well. The blood on the ground and the – the unclean tools of the surgery. It was really, really bad. I thought if I didn't die of birth, I would die of infection of that place. And I – I had that infection actually. When I gave birth, I got ill. I got sick really, really bad.
Of course, they didn't give me any pills, any—. Nothing. No nothing. No nothing. No needle, no nothing. And while I was – I was giving birth, the police officer, it was a girl, of course, he kept – he kept pushing me on my tummy, on my – on my chest, and, like, hitting me and slapped me a few times on my face. She was sleepy and she wanted me to finish this thing. So, she kept yelling me, "Come on. Finish. Let's get this finished. Let's—." Yeah. "Come on. Get up. Stop whining. Stop crying. Stop doing this."
It was – it was really torture. It was really torture. Of course, they – they gave me my daughter without any cloths, without any diapers, without any—. No bath, no water. No nothing. No food. No nothing. I just wanted a sip of water, but they didn't give me, even that. I—. it was – it was very tragic.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Noor wrapped her baby in her clothes and was waiting for them to take her back to the cell, to be reunited with her. Instead, they took her to another room in the hospital full of coffins.
NOOR At first, I was afraid that there was real dead bodies in it. But there were just preparing it for the – for the people who died. There was spider all over the place and blood all over the walls. And mouses. And there were two leather beds so scratched and broken and very, very, very dirty. The place itself looked like a torturing cell. It was very, very disgraceful.
That was the point where I had this breakdown, that I really started crying, because there was nobody. Nobody's there with me. I kept crying for about an hour. That was the point I realised that it's not okay, that we're not staying for a day or two, that this is serious. I realised that it's become true. Those aren't just lies. And I – I remember all of the – the talk of the Assad regime cells and the Assad regime's methods of torturing. And I remembered everything. That's when I realised there's a difference between knowing and realising. We know the thing, but you don't realise it. We were trapped, and we need help.
The investigator said that I may stay for another fifteen or twenty years. I—. That was the moment I believed he was really honest, not really just a threat to me.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Noor's daughter was taken from her after forty days of her birth and was sent to an Assad-affiliated foster home. More than eight months had passed since her detention, and she had no idea when this ordeal would end. Until one day, they came to take another baby from their mother. Noor had the breakdown and started to knock on the door and scream unstoppably. After a while came an intelligence officer.
NOOR He told me that "You didn't do anything. You were supposed to get out. There's no charges on you. No real charges on you. You were supposed to get out." But it looks like the – the big general doesn't want you to get out. That's why you're here."
I told him, "Okay. When I'm gonna get out?"
He told me, "Soon. Actually, very, very soon."
I told him he is a liar and it's just a joke. It's just the game.
He told me, "No, no. I'm not lying on you. I didn't lie."
And he wasn't lying. We get out after about a week. I don't remember. Ten days, maybe, or seven days. I don't remember. But we didn't go home. We went to another place, another detention.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Noor was assigned to the second field military tribunal in Sednaya. Since 2010, this court has been responsible for condemning tens of thousands of Syrians to their death inside Sednaya. The proceedings before the military field courts are entirely arbitrary and often lasts just one or two minutes. They cannot be considered legitimate.
As Sednaya doesn't have a woman's cell block, all the women were kept in Adra until their sentencing.
NOOR Every single day that [unintelligible] calls and give his instructions. So, we used to wait for that call. We used to wait to hear our names, to hear our names and the last name is calling for death. But that was very nerve wrecking.
They take the girls suddenly. Like, out of a sudden, they – they pull her out of her room. They tell her to pack up her things and come with them. Of course, because they're girls there, there was an old girls there, so they tell us that "This is the day. This is the day you're going to die." So, the girl gets afraid. She cries. She – she yells. She tries to run. But the officers run after her and maybe they can pull her from her hair, from her clothes. They – they don't care. No one will punish them. No one will judge them. They can do whatever they want.
So, when the girls witnessed that, it gets really scary situation. I witnessed that day a lot of times. Maybe six or seven times. And we were waiting for our turn. It was a moment of weakness. We all have that moment. You have it in your heart and your brain. You even start to have it in your face.
Why? Why is that happening to me? I didn't do anything wrong in my life. I didn't hurt anyone.
NADIA AL-BUKAI With each passing day, Noor thought they would call her name. She was thinking at least she can save her daughter before she dies. But if she didn't manage, she was fearful of what that would mean.
NOOR I got afraid that if I died, no one will admit she was existing.
NADIA AL-BUKAI She called her mother.
NOOR I told her you have to move very fast, specially that, at the time, they gave them my husband's family a certification of death for my husband. So, I knew if my husband was dead and I was dead, no one will ask about the girl. No one will get her out. So, I wanted to get her out before I die. So, I told her, "You should move very fast."
So, we hired a lawyer. A very powerful lawyer that has his connections. Of course, I knew him by the girls in the prison. He took very strong and large cases. So, I took his number, and I told her to have the shock. So, she. She kept trying after that for nine months. Eventually, the lawyer told her I didn't have any way, but to go to the airport. "You have to go by yourself, by herself alone, and go and take the girl and sign papers."
Eventually, she took her. Of course, we paid a lot of money. Nothing works with that money in Syria. After she got out, by the age, a year and half, I've seen my children in the visits. Of course, they didn't recognise me. It was a hard moment. Actually, it was worse than the detention itself. When they see you and they cry. They think you're a stranger. You try to convince them that you're – you're – you're their mother.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The resilience of the detainees families and their determination to fight for the loved ones has always inspired me. I remember how my mother sold everything she had to get my father out of prison. However, they transferred him to Adra instead of liberating him.
There, my father met Riyad, and the rest of my story with him is history.
After his release, we crossed the borders to Lebanon in 2015. If it wasn't for the money my mother paid, maybe my father would never be free. Money and luck again were what also safety up at the borders when the regime men were searching him.
DIAB SERRIH The way they blackmailed me and threatened me with being taken to the security branches really destroyed me. I kept suffering from this encounter specifically for over five years. Especially the first three years after the incident.
The story ended when one of the two guys who were interrogating me told me, "We want to help you. But clearly you don't want to help yourself."
I told him, "Anything you want. Just tell me what you want."
He gave me my gloves back and returned the $500 they had confiscated, then gestured for me to give him some of it. I give him a hundred dollars, and he just stared again as if saying, "We are two people. Just hundred dollars?"
I gave him another hundred dollars, and these $200 saved my life.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The border guards put Diab in a taxi heading to Lebanon. And Diab paid the driver another hundred dollars to help him sort his papers issue and cross out of the country.
DIAB SERRIH When we crossed the Syrian and Lebanese borders, passed the Lebanese, flag, and finally arrived in the border town, Al Masna, I asked the driver for a cigarette. It took me maybe two puffs to finish the cigarette. The driver was shocked.
I asked for another one.
I was in total disbelief that I was still alive. I couldn't believe that I was saved. This story stayed in my mind for around five years, three of those years with constant nightmares about this specific incident. My wife could tell. I used to see the moment when they stripped me naked and put me in that place in the street while I waited for the intelligence patrol to come and take me away.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The countless atrocities committed by Assad and his allies, Russia, and Iran have forced millions of Syrians to flee their homes, sometimes with nothing but some clothes or important papers and, sometimes, with nothing at all.
After two years in Adra, Noor and her husband's family weren't executed. Their death sentences were commuted to five years in prison by a presidential pardon, meaning that they were eligible for parole. But Assad was using these pardons to show himself to be a merciful leader, forgiving the rebels. It was a public relations stunt.
In 2020, the parole was turned into a prisoner exchange agreement with the opposition. The regime got back loyalists and militia men in exchange for releasing detainees from Assad's detention centres. Noor and her husband's family were among those released. But there was one condition. Upon being freed, they would have to leave the regime-controlled areas.
NOOR We didn't want to be exiled outside of Syria, even though we know that the situation in Syria was getting really bad. But we wanted to see our parents, our families, our schools, our homes.
We couldn't sleep. We kept talking and crying and remembering things that we – we've been through. We couldn't sleep for days. They actually offered us pills for that. We couldn't sleep for a long, long, long time. We had fears that, if we went to sleep, we will see dreams or nightmares of prison again.
NADIA AL-BUKAI it was not only former prisoners like Noor who could no longer return to regime-controlled areas. Many families perceived to be opponents of the regime were also unable to return home.
GHUFRAN KHULANI For me and my family, we cannot go about back, because the regime is there, and only we can go back if then regime destroyed, because he will punish us again. We dream always to go back to Syria, but it's not our choice until the regime is over.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Far from home, Ghufran wants to understand what happened to her missing brothers, and Noor is desperate to find out the truth about her health.
NOOR I have the small paper that says that his death. I don't know if we know or realise the truth. I just know there's a paper that we don't believe. We can never believe anything that they say, that the Assad regime says. So, right now, we're not believing or not convinced yet. If he's dead, we want to have proof. It's our right to have a proof that he's death. Not a piece of paper, of course, signed by a liar probably. Of course, a liar. So, we want to a proof. Maybe somebody who saw him, maybe a body. Or anything. Or maybe he's alive, and we will still try to get him out of there. We won't stop seeking answers.
NADIA AL-BUKAI If it wasn't for the horrific photos Caesar had made public, thousands of families would have known nothing about the deaths of their loved ones.
GHUFRAN KHULANI The regime steal our right to grieve like normal people or to – even to be sad, you cannot. My nephew asked me. Always, they have this kind of hard questions. "Where my dad? Why he is not with us in this important moment?"
"Where his grave now?" When we told him they are dead. "Where there grave? Why we cannot visit their grave?"
And it's very hard to explain to children's this information or this situation, because they are young and it's hard information. I don't like any family to have this situation or this kind of pain when you are not certain. Even now, we still – we're not certain, because we don't have anything solid or solid information. So, I don't like any family to be in our case or even there's now lots of family in Syria who have same situation.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Ghufran joined the Caesar Families Association, a group of families who identified their loved ones in Caesar's photos. Her sister Amina, co-founded Families for Freedom, a women-led movement that calls for freedom for all detainees in Syria They both continue to campaign tirelessly, alongside many other families and activists, to demand truth and justice for their loved ones who have been detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared.
Next week on Behind the Sun, we find out how Riyad got out of Adra Prison and how he and his long-lost missing friend from Sednaya, Diab, found each other again.
Behind the Sun is a co-production between Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, in collaboration with the Association of Detainees and the Missing (ADMSP) and the Syrian Center for Justice and Accountability (SJAC) under its project, On the Margins No More.
This series is written and produced by Muhammad Farouk.
Thank you to Ranim, Ola, Sarah, Mais, and Ruairi from The Syria Campaign and Rahaf from ADMSP for helping put this series together.
Voiceover for Diab was presented by Mahmoud Nowara.
Editing, mixing, and sound design was done by Jarek Zaba and Ivan Easley.
Additional production support from Molly Freeman, Tom Biddle, and Lincoln Van der Westhuizen. Sandra Ferrari is the executive producer. The theme music is by Milo Evans. My name is Nadia al-Bukai.
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