At a Syria morgue, people search for loved ones killed by Assad regime

People rushed to morgues in Damascus to search for loved ones who perished in Bashar al-Assad’s infamous prisons.

Mohammad Chaeeb spoke softly into his phone, telling a relative the grim news: he found his brother at the Al-Mujtahid Hospital morgue.

“I saw him and said my goodbyes,” he said. His gaze lingered on the blackened body of Sami Chaeeb, whose teeth were bared and whose eye sockets were empty. It looked as if he had died screaming. “He doesn’t look normal. He doesn’t even have eyes.”

The dead man was jailed five months ago, disappearing into a dark prison system under the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. His body is just one of many found in Syrian detention centres and prisons since Assad’s government fell last weekend.

Nearby, forensic workers worked rapidly to identify the bodies and hand them over to relatives.

Yasser Qasser, a forensic assistant at the morgue, said they received 40 bodies that morning from the hospital, that were being fingerprinted and having DNA samples taken.