NADIA AL-BUKAI Just before we begin, I wanted to let you know that this podcast contains some description of physical and psychological violence. Please use discretion.
Since 2015, when I arrived in Europe, I have grown more attached to the sun. I always think of the winter sun where I am in Europe as a guest of honour in the sky. It appears only in short cameos throughout the weeks. And when it does, you don't get the full feeling of it. A friend of mine once called it the fridge bulb, because felt that the sun was only there to light the cold days, but it doesn't really keep you warm.
In Syria, where I'm from, I remember winters being sunny and warm. I miss them. It's not only the sun itself that is different in Europe. The difference is also in how other things feel. Intangible things like air. I don't know how to explain it, but in Syria, air smelled like Assad, my country's ruler. In every breath I took, his presence was powerful in my chest. In the back of my mind, I imagined him counting the number of oxygen atoms I breathe and only allowing me what's necessary to stay alive. The rest of the oxygen was his. He kept it to remind me of how much he owns everything in Syria. But in Europe, all the oxygen in the air is mine. You can say air is air and the sun is the same everywhere, but they are not. At least not to me.
As a Syrian refugee, safety was the reason why my family had to leave Syria in 2015, before that, my father was arrested and detained twice, because the Assad regime saw his peaceful activism as an existential threat. But, now, I hear people saying that Syria is safe, that the war is over, that Assad regime has "substantially improved safety" in the capital, Damascus.
These aren't my words. It's the Danish government's description, the same government in clear violation of human rights conventions and wants to send back hundreds of Syrian refugees from Damascus to meet their unknown fate there.
Syria is safe, they say. Maybe they don't fully realise what has been and is still happening in Syria. They don't know about the real and ongoing horrors that more than one hundred thousand detainees continue to face in detention Syria just because they dare to express their opinions or criticise the authorities from torture to enforced disappearance and killings.
The story I am going to tell you in this podcast is not just about these atrocities. It is a story of love, friendship, and surviving against the odds. To fight for all those left behind.
But, right now, what I think about most is that misconception about the meaning of safety in Syria. Is Syria safe?
RIYAD AVLAR of course not. Syrians couldn't go back to their country.
NADIA AL-BUKAI From Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, this is Behind the Sun. I'm Nadia al-Bukai.
The voice you heard earlier is Riyad. He doesn't speak English well in his opinion, but he wanted to speak in English for you, because he believes that it's best for him to try doing his own translation.
RIYAD AVLAR My name is Riyad. Riyad Avlar. In fact, it is, in Turkish, like this: Avlar.
NADIA AL-BUKAI As he just said, Riyad is Turkish. I met him for the first time under strange very strange circumstances. The first time we were in touch, I was thirteen years old and he was in prison. He was my father's cellmate. And I was trying to connect him with his family in Turkey. He had been in detention in Syria for eighteen years at that point. And he didn't call them once. Of course, not because he didn't want to, but because he was denied this very basic right.
In his first six and a half years of detention, he was forcibly disappeared, and his family had no idea where he was or if he was dead or alive. Riyad had such an unusual and extremely difficult journey, and I would like you to hear his story.
RIYAD AVLAR You were a child in this time, I know. And I couldn't believe myself. This is a child who helped me.
NADIA AL-BUKAI When I met Riyad over the phone, he didn't have any family members living in Syria. He was in prison, as I said earlier. And there, if you were lucky enough to get a chance to call someone, you can't make international or internet calls. So, the arrangement that happened, in 2014, was that Riyad would call me on my phone and I would call his family and then connect their calls.
RIYAD AVLAR You changed my life. You give me hope. You give me a smile. And how I say thank you and thank you and thank you, I know it will not be enough for you, Nadia. You have to know this, my girl.
NADIA AL-BUKAI I did what I had to do.
RIYAD AVLAR You and your family. Your father, too. You know, that my mother, for the first time, after seventeen years, she saw my face through your father pictures, when he drawed my face. And I couldn't or I will not—not just I couldn't—I will not forget all my life that one family came and changed my life.
NADIA AL-BUKAI My father is also an artist, and he drew Riyad's face, so that his mother could see what he looks like after all those years. One of the reasons why Riyad is the right candidate to help me explain the meaning of "safety" in Syria is because Riyad is a survivor of enforced disappearance in my country.
After he was kidnapped by the Syrian regime in the nineties, he was held in secret detention for twenty-one years, completely cut off from the outside world and his loved ones. He was held behind the sun.
In Syria and other countries in the Middle East, "behind the sun" is a term that strikes fear in the hearts and minds of many. People say it when they speak about someone who has disappeared, usually under suspicious or forced circumstances, or to avoid explicitly mentioning the notorious intelligence services known as Mukhabarat or its officers. If you do something like that, you will probably end up behind the sun yourself. And the regime henchmen also say this phrase to emphasise their ability to hide people without a trace. Behind the sun is dark, cold, cruel, and far from safety. People die behind the sun.
When Riyad finally escaped this abyss, he vowed to shed some light on these dark places. He co-founded ADMSP right after he was freed from Syria in 2017. ADMSP stands for the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison. Riyad's behind the sun location was Sednaya Military Prison. Not many outside of Syria know of it.
RIYAD AVLAR When we are talking about the Sednaya Prison, I know, when we say the prisons, many people thinking that the prison is like Democrats' countries prisons, but it isn't like this.
NADIA AL-BUKAI In fact, Sednaya is not a prison at all. It is not a normal detention centre where you have rights, get visits, or get a lawyer. You may not get sufficient daily food rations or see the sun and breathe fresh air regularly. Not at all. These things do not exist there. In fact, if you Googled Sednaya now, you would find it widely known as the human slaughterhouse. That's how Amnesty International named it and that's how all the Syrian know it.
DIAB SERRIH The best description of it is a death camp. The Syrian regime detains people and sends them to their deaths in Sednaya. Just death. There is no other destiny except for a very few people, and those are the very fortunate ones who would survive this place.
NADIA AL-BUKAI This is Diab. He is a Syrian activist, Riyad's best friend, a former cellmate in Sednaya, and one of the founders of ADMSP. He doesn't speak English, That's why you will hear an English voice over his words.
Before Sednaya turned in the synonym of "torture" and "killing" like it is now, it was just another addition to Assad's father, Hafez, collection of prisons. It was opened in 1987 as military detention camp. To get as many detainees as possible, it was built on a very wide stretch of land, more than one million square metres or around three hundred fifty acres. And when it comes to making people disappear, Hafez al-Assad needed privacy. So, it was built on a tall hill, surrounded by wide, empty land, hidden away more than thirty kilometres northeast of the centre of the capital.
When they opened it, among the first prisoners were communists, Muslim Brotherhood members, and Palestinian detainees from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. Most of the other detainees were people who opposed the regime politically or anybody who had a differing opinion to those of the state or the regime.
DIAB SERRIH In the past there were human rights violations. Anybody who vocally opposed the government would be sent to prison and tortured. But since 2011, the situation is no longer just human rights violations. It has become crimes against the humanity. It has become war crimes. It is different. It became systematic. Human rights violations became systematic. Torture became systematic and at a mass scale.
In Syria now, it's not a single individual incident here and there or limited to some prisons. No. No. Now, at every detention centre in Syria, you are exposed to torture and exposed to forcible disappearance. So, this is what has changed. Whereas before, there used to be human rights violations, now, the situation is a mass crime against humanity.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Now, as the world's attention appears to be fading, countries seem to be normalising relations with Assad. And what might that mean for him? An escape from justice.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, nearly one hundred twenty-eight thousand have never emerged and are presumed to be either dead or still in custody in Syria. Since March 2011, over forty thousand were killed under torture. Many prisoners die from conditions so dire that a United Nations investigation labelled the process "extermination." The pace of new arrests, torture, and execution is increasing, Diab says.
DIAB SERRIH After ten years of revolution or war or whatever you want to call it, I mean, there is no safety. There are still the security forces and intelligence branches. There are prisons and detention centres. There is forcible disappearance. So, of course, it's not safe for anybody to live there or for anybody who escaped Syria, because of the war or the security forces or intelligence branches, to return to Syria. Because until now, nothing has changed. The policy of detention and forcible disappearance is still continuing.
NADIA AL-BUKAI If I asked anyone in the world, "What do you think an Air Force Intelligence Service does?", they might say something about monitoring air space or countering threats related to air force or air defence systems. But just like how the meaning of safety in Syria doesn't match what it represents outside, so does Air Force Intelligence or Air Force Mukhabarat a.k.a al-Zawiyah. They are the all-watching eyes and the all-hearing ears of the regime that monitor whatever happens in Syria. That's what most Syrians would say if you asked them about al-Mukhabarat al-Zawiyah.
When Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, the one you heard speaking to crowds, took control of the country in a coup in 1970, he did it using al-Zawiyah, his own intelligence service, the one he created while commanding the Air Force in the sixties. To solidify his rule, Hafez al-Assad created a minority elite. The top leadership are drawn largely from his extended family and the Alawite community.
During the insurgency that rocked the regime and was led by the Muslim Brotherhood between 1978 and 1982, the role and power of his intelligence agencies expanded dramatically. During this period, they gained increased resources and personnel and demonstrated brutal ruthlessness to cow any potential opponent.
RIYAD AVLAR Rifaat al-Assad himself, at that time, he was an officer and he went to this detention centre and killed, in moments, hundreds of prisoners for nothing.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Rifaat al-Assad is Hafez' brother in case you didn't recognize the name. He commanded a feared military group at that time called the Defence Companies. To understand the context of what is happening now in Sednaya, in Syria, and how the intelligence is running the country, we must go back to the times when things changed.
Four years before Bashar al-Assad, the current leader of Syria, became the president, in 1996, Riyad, then a nineteen-year-old student in Syria, was abducted while he was in public transit. The Mukhabarat arrested him after he had sent a letter telling his friends about the stories he heard about the Tadmor Prison massacre in 1980, and Rifaat al-Assad, the president's brother, was involved in it.
RIYAD AVLAR I wrote and I tried to send this letter to my friend in Turkey to tell them what reality this is. But the Syrian intelligence search and find everything. I was a young boy, and these actions took twenty-one years from my life for nothing.
NADIA AL-BUKAI From the moment of his arrest, Riyad disappeared. Nobody knew where he went. His family and friends didn't know if he was dead or alive. At that time, the Syrian and the Turkish governments were in a cold war, and Damascus was harbouring the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, one of the founders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party militia (PKK) that was an integral part of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict.
RIYAD AVLAR When they captured me, of course, they show me these letters, and they said, "Okay. You see, you wrote something against us."
I said, "Okay. I wrote, but it was just a childish thing."
NADIA AL-BUKAI They made him sign and stamp his fingerprints on a confessional letter in Arabic, a language Riyad wasn't completely fluent in at that time. In the letter, he was falsely accused of spying on Syria and committing acts of espionage to destabilise the country. Remember, he was just nineteen at that time.
RIYAD AVLAR After fifteen years, I learnt they accused me—. I don't know what they call it in English, but to make matters or problems between two countries. They mean, Turkey – Turkey and Syria. And to brought armies against Syria. Oh, what I am? A Superman.
NADIA AL-BUKAI It's not a surprise that Riyad finds it laughable that the regime thought a young man like him was responsible for such elaborate plots against the state. Perhaps, his laughter is an attempt to protect himself from these dark memories.
But the Mukhabarat doesn't kid around. When he was detained, Riyad was with his wife. And after his arrest, he thought that they released her, because she didn't do anything. But that wasn't the case. After one year in the intelligence branches, an officer came to him and told him that his wife was in their custody and they wanted him to talk to her.
RIYAD AVLAR It was a real shock. I frozen.
I said, "She's here?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Why? What she did? Why you are captured her 'til now?"
He said, "I don't know. I'm just an officer."
'Cause just she was my wife. This is the reason. There was no reason. No reason at all. She didn't do anything.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Riyad's wife became tired of her situation. They were married young and they were certainly much too young for this. And when Mukhabarat men asked him to see her, she was fourteen days into a hunger strike. They wanted him to convince her to end it.
RIYAD AVLAR I said, "Okay. Where is her?"
He said, "In the car. And you have to talk with her to eat or she's going to die. And nobody will hear about her. Nobody will hear about you."
I went to car and I saw her. She was there in the car. And I tried to be strong in front of her, but inside me, I was crying. I took her on my hands. She was very, very weak, because, fourteen days, she wasn't eat anything. I took her and I began talking with her. I asked her, "Why did you do that? Why did you do that?"
She said, "Because I want to die."
I said, "Why?"
She said, "Because they are cruel. We didn't do anything. Why they took – took us here? For what?"
I said, "I don't know. But I know one thing. Just one thing. We have to – we have to fighting to go out from this hell. And I promise you I will do everything to take you outside from this place."
It was a very bad moment in my life. Yeah. And, of course, after that, she eat.
NADIA AL-BUKAI They didn't release her after what had happened, but Riyad did see her again.
RIYAD AVLAR After two years, they took me to a political section in another prison. They brought all the political women to that place, and she was one of them. And we began to wrote to each other letters and throw these letters to other from the windows. And every day, we wrote some things about love, about our life.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Moments like these are what keep people from falling apart. Not many were this lucky, but this certainly helped Riyad and his wife for a while. After six years and six months from their detention and disappearance, Riyad and his wife met again and saw a courtroom for the first time, the state security court.
RIYAD AVLAR There wasn't any court, in fact.
The judge said, "We sentence you to die."
So, I said, "What I did to die?"
And he – he stopped there. And after a while, he began to reading again. And he said, "Okay. We sentence you again to forever."
I said, "Forever what? What do you mean?"
He said, "You will stay in the detention centre forever.
"All my life?"
"Yes."
I said, "What I did?"
He said, "Shut up, man. Go out."
NADIA AL-BUKAI If you wonder how an official judge could be so flippant during sentencing, I'll explain a bit later. But for now, you should remember the judge's name: Fayez al-Nouri.
Fayez al-Nouri also sentenced Riyad's wife to six and half years, which is the exact same period she had already spent in detention. That said, she had already served her and was free to go.
RIYAD AVLAR She refused to go out. She said, "I won't go out without Riyad. I want him." And she began to scream. And she began to cry, cry, cry. And afterwards, they accept to – to let her to come and see me just for half hour.
And I tried to – to make her calm. I said, "Okay. Go. And when you go, you will working for me outside. You will told my family. You will told my friends – my friends to come and help me. Go. Please."
Yes. And at that moment, I believed that I will not see her again. I know she will go and I will not see her again at all. Yeah.
NADIA AL-BUKAI For two years after her release, Riyad's wife tried to work on getting him freed. She told everyone about him, about where they were, and about the alleged accusations. That was when his family first knew that he was alive.
But nothing happened. The Mukhabarat stayed as it is, and Riyad stayed where he was. Riyad never saw her again. He learnt after his release, fifteen years after the trial, that she got married again and had children. Riyad has not married again.
Between Riyad's enforced disappearance and his trial, something happened in 2000. Hafez al-Assad died and his son, Bashar, inherited the presidency without fair elections. A few months after Riyad's secret trial, Diab, a young Syrian, started engaging in online activism. He was a prominent member in an online forum. Something like Reddit. It was called Akhawia, which means "fraternity" in English. In this forum, Diab and his friends to speak freely about politics and other things.
In 2003, the internet in Syria was relatively new. So, people didn't know what level of censorship to expect and they also believed the rhetoric young Assad was spreading at that time. That he's modernising Syria and moving away from his father's role towards a more open and democratic Syria. But his Mukhabarat, the same intelligence services he proudly inherited from his father, grew tired of the forum and they certainly wouldn't tolerate what happened when the forum participants took online political discourse to the streets in 2005.
DIAB SERRIH We tried to establish a congregation of young people and we wrote a paper with our demands of the state. Basically, what we were saying on the internet, we put it on paper. And some young people adopted this manifesto. And we established an association we called Youth for Syria. Shams.
NADIA AL-BUKAI "Shams" means the sun, by the way. They were members of the sun movement calling for freedom and justice for Syrians. Of course, the regime was growing tired of political activity in general, not just Shams, and started detaining well-known dissidents.
The intelligence began to follow Shams' members and they exceeded in detaining one of the movement's leaders. When Diab heard, he fled from his home in Damascus. The thing is, if the Mukhabarat can't get to you, they will try to get to your family. The Mukhabarat arrested Diab's father and demanded that he should turn himself in by meeting them in the street.
DIAB SERRIH I arrived at the meeting place. After that, I found my dad with them in a car. I entered the car from the back door. There was a clearly high-ranking officer in the car. He was telling my dad not to fear. There is just a simple procedure, just a brief Q&A.
"We are just keeping him for a little bit. Maybe just taking him for as long as it takes to drink a cup of coffee. We'll send him right back to you after. There is nothing to worry about. We will return him to you."
Of course, my dad clearly did not believe it.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The intelligence officers didn't care about Diab's father, so they stopped playing nice.
DIAB SERRIH At the end, they got rid of my dad in a very humiliating way. When he refused to leave, they forced him out of the car. He kept looking at me and his eyes began tearing up at that moment. I felt like he was leaving a piece of his heart in the car. He was leaving his son. He kept looking at the car as it was leaving. I felt like he had lost something. He kept looking at the car as it was moving away like a piece of his heart was going away with it.
NADIA AL-BUKAI They blindfolded Diab and moved him to an intelligence branch where he would be detained and interrogated for a while. And just like the case in every Mukhabarat branch until now, they took him underground and started torturing him for thirty minutes. And then, came an interrogator.
The interrogation was a mix of torture and lectures.
DIAB SERRIH "The president is bringing technology to this country. He is the president of the Syrian Information and Technology Association. And he brought computers to this country," the interrogator was telling me. "This computer you see before you, we never would have dreamt of having it were it not for Mr. President."
"The president brought these computers. And you are using it for this alongside the baton and the whip and your other torture tools? Is this your modernisation? To have a computer and, at the same time, to have your whip, your baton, your tools to torture people with?"
NADIA AL-BUKAI The interrogation period took around forty-five days. During this time, he didn't gain anything from staying silent or refusing to say what they wanted to hear. In Syria's justice system, when the intelligence says something about you, you must admit it and everyone else should agree as well.
DIAB SERRIH As soon as you admit everything they want you to admit, that's the end. They stop the torture and send you to court. And we have to put "court" between quotation marks here.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Do you remember Fayez al-Nouri, the judge who sentenced Riyad and his wife? In 2007, Diab stood in the same courtroom with the same judge. Fayez al-Nouri perfectly encapsulated justice in Assad's Syria. This judge had been heading the State Security Court since the 1980s. In the nineties, there was a failed assassination attempt that left him deaf and visually impaired.
DIAB SERRIH And this is the man presiding over your case. This man will judge you.
NADIA AL-BUKAI In the trial, the judge is just a messenger that reads your sentence. And this particular messenger was a bad one.
DIAB SERRIH This man read my name, but then read the name of my friend's father instead of mine and read the name of another friend's mother instead of mine and read the birthdate of yet another person. I didn't understand the accusation when he pronounced them. I literally couldn't follow his words, 'cause he does not speak well. All I could understand was that we were sentenced and that we were being sent back.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The regime also denied Diab any legal assistance from human rights NGOs. And at that time, there weren't any lawyers who would voluntarily take Diab's case. Even now, it will be very dangerous for a lawyer to defend a political prisoner or someone accused of treason against the state. It can cost them their own freedom. So, the court appointed the defence. But because each one of the lawyers feared continuing with Diab, in his five court appearances, Diab had five different attorneys. When he was sentenced to five years in prison, Diab tried to tell the judge that he was coerced and tortured by the intelligence to confess.
DIAB SERRIH The judge replied, "You're a liar. The intelligence doesn't do anything like that. If you were starved, how are you still alive?"
So, the so-called judge was worse than the intelligence agents. He wouldn't beat you, but the only thing he would do is curse and insult you. Imagine, the judge is just telling you, "Shut up. Shut up." And disparaging you all the time with his way of talking, saying things like, "You are traitors." The judge would give you the feeling that you should feel lucky that he's not sentencing you to death.
NADIA AL-BUKAI I want to pause here for a moment. At that time, in 2007, Sednaya still functioned like the old version, a notorious prison run by the military with a bad record of human rights violations. That would soon change.
After his tried, Diab was heading towards the infamous Sednaya. One of the traditions that are common with all Assad detentions until now is a torture event known as "welcome parties."
DIAB SERRIH In the intelligence branches, for example, you keep getting beaten and tortured until you confess what they want you to confess. When I confessed—"Fine. I'm a traitor" —the beating stopped. But in Sednaya, you are being beaten for nothing. They are beating you to break you from inside, psychologically and spiritually, to snatch your humanity away from you, to transform you into an animal. And then, like a sheep, you enter your barn, namely solitary confinement. You keep being beaten. And, sometimes, they bring you some food. And you could die at any moment.
NADIA AL-BUKAI So, Diab decided to avoid giving any reason for the guards to torture him. He accepted his fate and tried to cope with his situation. At that time in Sednaya, inmates were allowed to read books and newspapers. But these publications had to go through Mukhabarat first for approval, which means it was just part of the state propaganda. At the end of the day, Assad didn't want dissidents to be able to think freely or have access to knowledge in Sednaya. Their free thinking is what got them inside in the first place.
By contrast, for Diab, books were the things that kept him sane. And whenever there was raised an opportunity to get his hands on a banned book, he would grab it immediately. After some time in Sednaya, Diab would meet someone who would change his life forever.
DIAB SERRIH We knew that there would be newcomers. So, we all wanted to see who they were. If there was somebody who fit my personality, somebody without problems, not radically religious, or had any other personal problems. So, we would have suitable company in our cell. So, I met someone and helped him carry his bag. And I immediately asked him, "What do you have in your bag? It's too heavy."
NADIA AL-BUKAI That person was Riyad. Since his trial and separation from his wife in 2003, the authorities moved him between detention centres. And during that time, nobody from his family were able to locate where he was. His arrival to Sednaya and meeting with Diab would also influence his life in a great way.
RIYAD AVLAR I hide, at that time, books from all the detainees. I hide them. I keep them. When he saw me, I had many books with me. And as a cat smelling milk, he could smell the books and – and we immediately became friends.
DIAB SERRIH That is where it started. I began to borrow books from him. I was constantly asking him for suggestions since I wanted to read and we were not otherwise allowed to read anything other than what's authorised by the state. But with Riyad, I found some nice books. Short stories, novels. Anyway, the relationship began to strengthen from there.
RIYAD AVLAR He told me, "Where are you from?"
I said, "I am from Turkey."
"Wow," he said. "Turkey?"
I said, "Yes. I'm from Turkey."
He said, "You are Turkish?"
"Yes," I said. "I'm Turkish, man."
It was a strange feeling.
"Oh." But he said, "Oh, the Syrian intelligence not just captured the Syrians. They also captured the other nationality."
NADIA AL-BUKAI The bond between Riyad and Diab grew stronger and stronger over the years. They were two likeminded men standing back-to-back against life in Sednaya. They call their relationship something beyond brotherhood.
DIAB SERRIH We were eating together. Our beds were beside each other. It's to the point that you know everything about each other. For example, I used to cook a little bit and Riyad would do the dishes. I knew, for instance, that Riyad didn't like spicy or salty food and he would drink his tea without sugar. So, when I would cook for us, I would cook to his specifications. I wouldn't make the food spicy or salty. It became like an old married couple, like a couple who had been married for forty years and know everything about each other. And each have their complaints about each other. But at the end of the day, they couldn't live without each other nor would they ever divorce each other.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Still, there was one thing that Riyad couldn't get over. For years, Riyad's family knew nothing about where he was or what happened to him. They only knew what his ex-wife told them when she got out.
RIYAD AVLAR Fifteen years, my family searched about me, and one of my family members went to Syria to ask about me. Three times, he went to Syrian intelligence centres, and they told him that I wasn't there. But I was there. And my brother was really near to me, maybe metres. But they told, "We don't have this name."
NADIA AL-BUKAI Diab didn't accept this situation for his best friend. He decided to write Riyad's address on a delicate piece of paper he extracted from cigarette tin foil and gave it to his mother on the next visit. He folded and concealed the message under his little fingernail to avoid detection during the body cavity search. Diab had let the nail grow for more than a month before executing his plan.
During a quick visit of about thirty seconds, he was allowed to hug his mother through a window. Diab kissed her hands and, while doing so, he passed the tiny paper into her grip and tightened his hands around her fingers.
DIAB SERRIH She didn't believe that there could be someone whose family knew nothing about him. And by the way, she just told me about this last year. She told me, "When I read the paper, I wanted to get out the same night. I was thinking, 'How could there be a mother who has known nothing about her son for fourteen years?' How could I sleep knowing that there is a mother wondering about her son for fourteen years?"
And, truly, she left for Turkey in two days.
RIYAD AVLAR After fifteen years for the first time, Diab's mother came from Damascus to Turkey and she began to search about my family, family's address, and she find my mother at the time. And for the first time, Diab mother's told my mother that I am alive. And my family, now, they can go and see me.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Today, despite living in different countries, Riyad and Diab are best friends and co-workers at ADMSP. Their dark ordeal with the Syrian intelligence darkness created a strong bond that stood the test of time.
DIAB SERRIH Nowadays, my kids tell me that Riyad is my brother. "Riyad is your brother, baba. Baba, you have a brother. His name is Riyad."
And I tell them, "Yes. Riyad is my brother, even though he's not my brother by blood."
For educational reasons, I was trying to explain the difference between a brother and a friend. But even my kids loved him that much. And now, this is our lives.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Riyad and Diab are now replicating what they did to each other to help the families of other detainees locate their missing loved ones. Their organisation, ADMSP today plays a pivotal role in informing the families of the detainees about the fate of their children. They do their best to locate the people who remain missing in Assad's network of prisons, in so-called safe and stable Syria.
But Riyad and Diab's story with Sednaya hasn't ended yet. In the next five episodes of this podcast, we will explore the transformation of Sednaya. We will understand how the regime has used Sednaya to control the population and supress the 2011 revolution. We will hear about the families searching for the loved ones and we will hear from a witness, in detail, about what happened in Sednaya.
Next week on Behind the Sun, we go through the events that transformed Sednaya from an ordinary prison to a human slaughterhouse.
Behind the Sun is a co-production of Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, in collaboration with ADMSP and the Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre, as part of its On the Margins No More project. It's written and produced by Muhammad Farouk.
Thank you to Ranim, Ola, Sarah, and Ruairi from The Syria Campaign and to Rahaf from ADMSP for helping put this series together.
Additional thank to Mahmoud Nowara for the voiceover and Jakub Otajovič for the support they presented for the project.
Editing, mixing, and sound design was done by Jarek Zaba. Additional production support from Molly Freeman and Tom Biddle. Sandra Ferrari is the executive producer. The theme music is by Milo Evans. My name is Nadia al-Bukai.
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