The Assad regime with a parent in 2013 detained these 6 Syrian children with their parents. Where are they now?

Children’s school uniforms hung at the door. Their academic workbooks lay on their tables. The toys covered with dust were still sitting on the floor.

Thus, Al-Abbasi found her sister Rania’s apartment in Syria, almost 12 years after being detained with her six children and tossed herself into the secret network of prison and detention of the former regime.

Al-Abbasi traveled from Saudi Arabia to visit a home in Dummar project, a wealthy neighborhood northwest of the Syrian capital, Damascus, February 25.

“The smell of murder fills the house. Walls and curtains are sad as if they are mourning their separation,” Al-Abbasi announced on Instagram.

She found every angle covered with dirt. The carpasses of the birds flying to the home were scattered on the floor.

He used to be a bright and busy home of six children: smoke, 13; Entisar, 12; Najah, 11; Alaa, 8; Ahmed, 6; and Layan, 1.

For years, Hassan Al-Abbasi, Rani’s brother, sought information about their place.

He actively sought children after the Bashara Al-Assad government was expelled last December. But his calls have remained unanswered, without a word about a family fate since March 2013.

“The situation is very difficult, because none of the children appeared and it was the first time our family entered the home for 12 years,” Hassan told CBC News from Ottawa, where he lives with his wife and children.

“It was very painful.”

The children probably switched to orphanage

On March 9, 2013, members of Assad’s military intelligence intelligence were arrested by her husband Rania Al-Abbasi, Abdul Rahman Yasin, in their home, before returning to the robbery of all gold and money, seized three cars, computers and mobile phones, along with passports and ownership documents and the KLINIC AL-ABBASA.

Two days later, members of the intelligence data were returned by Al-Abbasi, along with their six children and secretary Majdolina al-Qady, who was with them at the time.

The parents were charged with providing humanitarian aid to those who need during the Syrian Revolution, which broke out in March 2011.

The Al-Abbasia case quickly became one of Syria’s most prominent, pointing out the issue of missing detainees and children.

Hassan believes that the children probably stayed with earlier objects, according to reports of other detainees, before being transferred to orphanages or children’s care institutions and seized their identity and family origin. But it was impossible to check without access to the organization documents.

The disappearance of complete families is one of the widespread crimes committed during Assad’s brutal rule.

The Syrian Human Rights Network announced that she had received reports of this practice a few years ago and reportedly included institutions such as SOS Syria’s Syria.

In a statement At CBC News on February 25, the organization said “acknowledges concern about children who deal with care organizations, including the SOS Children’s Village Syria, by the former Government.”

“During the war, many children were unnecessarily separated from their families and the authorities put in alternative care services without the appropriate documentation of their origin.”

The arrest of children, family ‘systematically’

Hassan said his family paid thousands of dollars to prison officers and members involved in these operations for any information about earlier and her family, but each time they would be left with unverified information and no real knowledge of their place.

He said that the Children’s Aunt in 2013 visited Syrian custody to ask for the release of children in the months after their custody. The aunt was then detained for three months.

“The arrest of children and family was systematic. The regime could have returned the children to his relatives, but instead threatened to arrest them and if they speak,” Hassan said.

He said that the family hired a lawyer who would review orphan in 2022 after learning that the regime puts children detained or killed in their prisons. That didn’t even give answers.

In the coming years, Hassan said a worker in one of the orphanages that he recognized four of six children Although their names have been changed. Despite the attempts to reach them, Hassan failed to check it.

“These children are adults in our home … If you have killed them, send us any photos, at least we will know that they have been killed,” Hassan, appealing to those involved in the former regime operations.

At least 3,700 children are gone

The Syrian Human Rights Network says that proven lists show that approximately 3,700 children have forcibly disappeared from the Assad regime since 2011, although many suggest that the number is much higher – more than 10,000.

At the end of January SNHR called The transitional Syrian government to conduct a “direct and comprehensive” investigation of all organizations that received children from the former regime.

“Many relatives think that the families who were detained – child, mom and dad – that the regime was killed [all of] They … but there are so many children in these organizations, “Hassan said.

Children’s villages of SOS said that under new changes in management began to accept only children with documentation in 2018.

“We regret the unsustainable situation in which we have found ourselves when we receive children and unequivocally do not approve of such practices, because children should never separate each other from their families, unless this is not in their best interest,” the statement said.

The fate of Rania Al-Abbasia remains unknown, along with hundreds of thousands of other detainees in Assad’s prisons. Mass graves were discovered after the fall of the Assad regime, but it could take years to identify the remains.

Father believed he was killed after a month in custody

Hassan said the family believes that his son -in -law was tortured and killed about a month after being detained. They came to this conclusion after Abdul Rahman Yasin recognized on one of the 53,000 photographs shared by the Syrian military police defect called “Caesar” for smuggling photos from Syria in an effort to document the torture and brutal death in Assad’s prisons.

In the years that followed, Hassan said that relatives would ask people to visit Al-Abbasi and Yasin’s house to apply and see what was left behind. But they were too afraid that they were still monitoring or inhabiting intelligence officials.

Hassan said that he was more careful about his family that children may not be in orphanages or even in the country.

“We have faith. If they died, then they are martyrs. And if they didn’t die, then we continue to look for them,” he said.

“This is one disaster from many. So far we have not reached the actual scope of these crimes – we have come to just his part.”