Preserving evidence and securing justice for Assad’s crimes

Under former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the Syrian security sector kept meticulous records of its crimes. However, in the wake of the regime’s rapid fall, many files and server rooms at Syria’s security branches, prisons, and hospitals were burned by fleeing officials. Elsewhere, documents were strewn around in the chaos of war by locals searching for information about their families and journalists looking for stories, or ransacked by former officers trying to hide evidence of their crimes.

For those expecting that the sudden collapse of the regime would allow them access to troves of files like those smuggled out of the country by a former Syrian military forensic photographer codenamed “Caesar,” hope has been fading with each passing day. More than 50 years of evidence and over 800 sites of interest across the country mean that the scale outstrips short-term capacity to secure locations, and, as a result much of this vital evidence has been lost or remains unsecured.

In some cases, interested parties have preserved evidence in the interim or have passed what they could salvage from chaotic sites on to interim authorities. Meanwhile, vital files from at least some of the security branches in Damascus and the unconstitutional courts used to try the regime’s perceived opponents — including files that resemble the Caesar photos — are in the custody of Syria’s interim authorities. Efforts to secure, preserve, and utilize these files require significant and immediate support.

An estimated 136,614 people were believed to be held held in the regime’s prisons as of August 2024, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, though the actual number is likely more. For their families, the documents may provide long-awaited answers and a pathway to justice. The international community must step up to help Syria’s new authorities secure and protect the documents, provide information to the loved ones of those who suffered in Assad’s prisons, and pursue justice for these crimes.

Assad’s state of terror

Syria’s security and detention archipelago went far beyond what most people knew or understood. The scale of the enterprise is overwhelming despite being well-documented and reported. The immense number of people involved in the heavily bureaucratic process of surveillance, interrogation, detention, trials, and killing of the population is jarring. How the country will reconcile the past is the question at the heart of Syria’s future.

At one facility in rural Damascus, notebooks were filled with scribbled notes taken daily from the local informants. At the notorious al-Katib branch, the floor of a dark, vile dungeon of cells is scattered with papers containing “evidence,” like a Xerox of five one-hundred-dollar bills — illegal to possess in Assad’s Syria.

Security personnel would bring suspects to local branches for interrogation under torture to elicit confessions — real or imagined. Their testimonies — written by guards and signed under duress by detainees — can also be seen at the now-empty al-Katib office.

Following interrogation and evidence gathering, cases would be referred to public prosecutors, who would attach accusations or charges and refer the case files to the unconstitutional Counter Terror or Military Courts — including the notorious Military Field Courts — where citizens faced “trials” without the chance to provide evidence or, often, were afforded no trial at all.

Figures from the Counter Terror Court showed that at least 90,000 cases were referred to the court from the time of its inception in 2012 through mid-2020, according to public and private sources, including the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). At least 24,047 individuals were referred to the Military Field Courts by August 2023, according to the SNHR, though the opacity of those processes make exact figures difficult to establish.

Individuals often remained detained throughout the judicial process and were at risk of death by torture, regardless of the outcome of the proceedings. For those who survived, death was frequently handed down as a sentence.

Deaths were documented in detailed file notes, or photographs taken in hospitals as part of the “forensics” process. When Assad fell, Harasta Hospital’s morgue still contained the remains of 65 tortured detainees, according to guards at the facility. Bodies were buried in the large, unmarked mass graves now being uncovered across the country by locals, researchers, and journalists.

It is the files detailing charges and court processes and documenting deaths within the detention apparatus that provide the most detailed, gruesome, and valuable information about the regime’s crimes.

As Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell, the detained were released, but they were few when compared to the number of those arrested. As the last prisoners walked free, attention turned to the fate of the missing, preserving the evidence that can hold Assad accountable for his crimes, and explaining the suffering of the Syrian people under this suffocating system.

The files

Despite representing only a fraction of the regime’s documentation, paperwork that has survived fills countless rooms and contains the some of the most critical files for those who want answers and justice.

These case files contain names of the accused, charges, sentences, and the judges who presided. Some judges only ever gave death sentences, those who worked in these courts say. Other files contain dates on which individuals were executed or died in custody. Death files contain explanations of an individual’s death by heart attack, often used as a euphemism for a death under torture. Others include images of emaciated corpses, documented against names and prisoner numbers.

Interested parties––from local citizens, to NGOs, and civil society––have helped to preserve documents at chaotic sites, or handed drives over to the interim authorities. These, too, contain data about deaths, sentences, the whereabouts of the missing, and details of those directly responsible for these crimes.

In August 2013, Caesar smuggled 53,275 photographs out of the country depicting the corpses of at least 6,786 detainees, taken during the period between May 2011 and August 2013. Preserved files in Syria show that this practice continued for many years — until at least 2019, if not later. The world’s horror did not result in the regime ending the practice, nor did the international community intervene to end it. As a result, thousands more Syrians likely met this fate. Seeking justice is the only way to make amends.

The challenge ahead

Given the scale of abuses in Syria, pursuing accountability for regime crimes and revealing the fate of the missing have long been areas of focus for the international community. Millions of dollars have been spent on United Nations mechanisms and institutions mandated to secure, preserve, and utilize evidence of Assad’s crimes for use in international or universal jurisdiction initiatives or in a domestic justice process in Syria should the circumstances arise.

Despite this, the international response in Syria has been slow to get moving since Assad fell. To date, no international organizations are operating on the ground across Syria with the mandate and experience to document these files or protect and exhume mass graves.

Local communities seek answers about their loved ones and reassurance that meaningful justice processes will litigate abuses. Addressing the shadow of the past appropriately will be vital to ensuring citizens can move forward peacefully and build a secure and prosperous future for Syria, therefore it should be a political priority.

Local authorities, Syrian civil society and experts, and the international community must now work together on a phased plan of action that protects and preserves these sites and records, catalogues and documents files, exhumes graves and delivers forensic evidence and remains, provides information to the families of the missing, pursues international justice for those at the top of the regime, and supports an appropriate local justice and reconciliation framework within Syria, once established. Rapid deployment of coordinated, phased, international support is needed. To facilitate this effort, the new administration should appoint and empower a central point of contact to liaise with experts and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the mandate to support this process.

Authorities from the caretaker administration are making some efforts to secure evidence and graves, but, given the overwhelming array of challenges they must now address in a country decimated by war, it has not been a priory for them. In addition to justice issues, urgent tasks range from establishing security and managing surging humanitarian aid to restoring public services and facilitating economic recovery, all while trying to install new governance systems and implement a political transition process. However, reckoning with the past in an appropriate way is central to maintaining security and healing the deep wounds caused by the Assad regime.

With well over 100 estimated mass graves sites and hundreds of branches, prisons, and courts across the country, it would be an impossible task for the new authorities — or any authority — to secure them all. Some of the most significant sites now have guards instructed to allow only those with permission to enter.

From here, the first phase of the process should focus on expanding on these efforts to secure critical sites and heighten protection of the largest graves and the small number of physical sites with the most vital files, including those already being protected by authorities. Files should also be secured in fire- and water-retardant containers where possible. They also should be digitized to ensure duplicate records exist.

These tasks cannot wait until larger organizations can deploy in 2025. Instead, the expertise of Syrian organizations, supported by a surge in funding, equipment, and training where required, could be deployed to undertake this effort. Now that it should eventually be possible to pursue and achieve justice locally, Syrian actors and expertise should be central to all efforts. International actors should provide resources, expertise, scalability, funding, and specific additive mandates that support Syrian’ ambitions.

A parallel process should work on a joint understanding of the uses for this information, streamlining the mandates and operational relationships between local authorities, civil society, and international organizations; troubleshooting where gaps exist, to include supporting and expanding local capacity; and deploying international agencies such as the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) for collection and preservation of vital evidence, the Independent Institution on Missing Persons (IIMP) for sharing information about the missing, and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) for exhumations. Additionally, the potential future role of the International Criminal Court (ICC) should not be overlooked, and preparatory work to align with its evidentiary standards should begin now. Protecting and digitizing documents at second- and third-priority sites also needs to occur as capacity comes online.

Finally, all actors should work to deploy a robust and joint program using all available and desired resources to assist in the mammoth task of preserving and utilizing the vast amount of documentation, providing information to families, and pursuing justice.

However, all actors must remember this is not only a technical process. The scale of the killing, detention, and oppression means that supporting survivors through psychosocial assistance and the whole of society through an appropriate transitional justice or reconciliation process that allows communities to rebuild their social fabric is a vital element of security policy moving forward. Almost every Syrian family has had someone detained or disappeared. Many more were forced to support, witness, or live in fear of the sprawling security apparatus. The trauma caused by the Assad regime will have a long tail; it is up to all of us to help Syrians heal.

Emma Beals is a Senior Advisor at the European Institute of Peace, a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, and the former co-founder and editor of Syria in Context. She is an independent consultant focused on conflict, with expertise in Syria.

Photo by Scott Peterson/Getty Images