“All I know is that they were detained here” – Libération

In the wake of the White Helmets, among the shreds of documents left by the routed security forces, many civilians are desperately searching for clues about the fate of their loved ones arrested under the Assad regime.

It is no longer a question of finding the living but the dead. Eight days after the collapse of the Syrian regime, the chances of finding a prisoner still alive in the Dante prison system built by Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez are a miracle. But that doesn't stop us from looking for the bodies. Thousands of families are asking for them. Since December 9, they have come from Homs, Hama, Deir ez-Zor, Hassaké or Aleppo and flock to Damascus, in desperate search of an answer. They want to know where their father, their son, their brother, their uncle, their nephew, and sometimes several of them are buried, in which prison they were killed, through which others they may have passed. They want answers so that their loved ones are no longer part of these “disappeared”, these prisoners swallowed up in the torture machine of the old regime.

They often have very few resources. Those who can put up posters on the walls of hospitals, prisons, at the entrance to the Al-Hamadiyeh souk or on facades of the city: a photo, a name, a date of birth and a number.