This will be going on for years yet - tens of thousands of people the regime have disappeared - good old anti-imperialism:
Families of Syria’s disappeared scramble for answers as government quietly closes thousands of detention files
For most families, learning of loved-ones’ deaths is the first news they have heard in years. And yet others are still waiting.
Wafa al-Ayoubi’s 21-year-old son, Mohammad, left their family home in Damascus one morning in 2014 and never came back. After five days of frantic searching by al-Ayoubi and other family members, security forces raided the house—with Mohammad in tow—as they searched the premises for supposedly incriminating evidence. The memory of his face, almost unrecognizable from torture, has haunted her ever since.
“I saw my son with my own eyes after he was disfigured and tortured when they raided our house,” she says. “That was from five days of torture… after six years, how does he live? What have they done to him?”
‘Turning the page’
Ordinarily, families, in the company of witnesses, update civil registry status—not the government itself. The changing of records reflects a significant change in policy.
Lama Fakih, deputy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) for the Middle East, says it amounts to an effort by the Syrian government “to try and turn the page in a very superficial way,” by closing files in a bid to avoid culpability for likely crimes against humanity.
