DAMASCUS — Mohammad Chaeeb spoke with a quiet voice as he shared heartbreaking news with a relative: he discovered his brother at the morgue.
“I saw him and said my goodbyes,” he recounted, his eyes drawn to the lifeless figure of Sami Chaeeb, whose mouth was contorted in a grimace and whose eye sockets were hollow. It appeared as though he had met his end in agony. “He doesn’t look normal. He doesn’t even have eyes.”
Four months ago, Sami was incarcerated, slipping into a grim prison system under the governance of President Bashar al-Assad. His is just one of many bodies that have emerged from Syrian detention facilities since the regime’s recent collapse.
Some inmates passed away just a few weeks prior, while others had been deceased for months. Syrians living abroad are sharing haunting images of the deceased, hoping to locate their missing loved ones.
At the morgue in Damascus visited recently, families gathered around a wall displaying some of these photographs, forming a somber gallery of the lost. Relatives searched frantically for familiar faces among the eerie collection.
Mohammad Chaeeb was unsure why his brother had been detained. “We heard rumors — cannabis, organ trafficking, drugs, weapon trading. But he wasn’t involved in any of that,” he clarified.
He rushed to the morgue after receiving a message from another brother in Turkey, who sent a photo of a body that bore resemblance to Sami. He identified his brother by a mole beneath his ear and a finger that was partially amputated—an injury from his childhood.
While standing by the body, he gently lifted the sheet and examined Sami’s left hand, pointing out the disfigurement.
Forensic workers were seen swiftly processing the numerous bodies in the morgue, working diligently to match the deceased with their families.
Yasser Qasser, a forensic aide at the facility, mentioned that they had received 40 bodies that day alone for fingerprinting and DNA sampling, with only eight having been identified so far. “But dozens of families are arriving, and the numbers don’t match,” he added with concern.
Some of the corpses had come from the notorious Saydnaya Prison and still wore the clothing of inmates, Qasser explained.
Dr. Abdallah Youssef, a colleague of Qasser, indicated that the process of identification would be time-consuming.
“We understand the family’s suffering, but our work is under immense strain. The bodies were discovered in salt rooms, subjected to harsh cold,” he stated.
As morgue officials inspected the remains, they noted bullet wounds and signs indicative of torture.
Since the onset of the Syrian conflict in 2011, an estimated 150,000 individuals have either been detained or reported missing. Under Assad’s authoritarian grip, even a hint of dissent could lead to immediate imprisonment. Over the years, this effectively became a sentence of death, with very few ever emerging from such a system.
According to reports from Amnesty International, citing testimonies from released prisoners, thousands have met their end through mass executions, with many others suffering through torture, severe beatings, and sexual violence. Numerous occupants perished from ailments, neglect, or malnutrition while others descended into a state of psychosis, ultimately starving themselves.
Among the bodies at the morgue was Mazen al-Hamada, a Syrian activist who had fled to Europe, returned to Syria in 2020, and was imprisoned shortly thereafter. His disfigured remains were discovered wrapped in bloody fabric from Saydnaya.
Amidst the somber scene, families traversed the morgue, shedding quiet tears and pausing to seek familiar features among the covered corpses, each of which bore a number, some simply labeled “unknown.”
Hilala Meryeh, a 64-year-old Palestinian mother, stood amidst the chilling atmosphere, bags of bodies surrounding her. She had just located one of her missing sons.
She paused, squeezed her eyes shut, and tilted her face toward the sky, murmuring a prayer. Her four sons had been apprehended by the former Syrian government in 2013 during a crackdown on the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. She still sought to find three of them.
“I don’t know where they are,” she lamented. “Please bring me my children, search for my children!”
“Why did he do this to his people?” Meryeh cried out in anguish. “Imprison them, and we wouldn’t have been opposed. Try them, but to slaughter them?”
Other individuals, like Imad Habbal, stood in stunned silence within the morgue, grappling with the reality and unfairness of their losses. Habbal stared at the lifeless form of his brother, Diaa Habbal.
“We came yesterday, and we found him dead,” he recounted. “They killed him. Why? What was his crime? What did he ever do to them? Just because he returned to his homeland?”
Diaa Habbal had lived in Saudi Arabia since 2003 but came back to Damascus in mid-2024 to visit family. His brother shared that he was arrested by military police on accusations of dodging military service.
With shaking hands, Imad lifted the sheet covering his brother’s body, his voice cracking with emotion as he spoke to him.
“I told you not to come,” he wept. “I wish you hadn’t returned.”