Mutilated body parts reveal the atrocities under Assad's regime

Mutilated body parts reveal the atrocities under Assad's regime

The wounded and mutilated bodies in the corpse show house of the Mujahid Hospital are difficult to bear-they are tangible evidence of the brutal regime of the Dictator Bashar al-Assad . Thousands of desperate people are crowded in order to finally get answers to the fate of their missing relatives.

despair and hope for answers

"Where are you?" Falls a woman. "My mother has disappeared for 14 years, where is she? Where is my brother, where is my husband, where are you?" About 35 corpses were found in a military hospital in the Syrian capital Damascus, just a few days after the regime's fall. It is believed that they are among Assad's last victims. A man points to the torn clothing and suspects that it is prisoners of the notorious Saydnaya prison.

horrific discoveries in the corpse show house

In the corpse house, the bodies are only identified by numbers. Since there is not enough space, a provisional area was set up outdoors where the families come together and with their cell phone lamps illuminating the faces of the dead, looking for familiar features. But they also see the cruel wounds that seem to be tortured. A woman looking under the corpses chokes and leaves the corpse show house.

a strong testimony of suffering

dr. Ahmed Abdullah, an employee of the corpse house, condemns the people who have left these traces and blames the Assad regime for this. "This is the crime of the regime - the way they tortured people," he told CNN. "Even in the Middle Ages, they didn't torture people that way." On Sunday, Assad fled to Russia after the Syrian rebels had made a quick advance, and the anger of the population against him is noticeable. A woman who says that her only son was taken by the regime 12 years ago calls: "I ask Allah to burn him, he and his sons. I hope he burns as he burned my heart."

The search for the missing

There was no information for families about missing relatives for so long. The people who gathered in front of this corpse house only want answers, even if they come in the form of a body. The Assad government was known for leading meticulous records. A deserter who once worked as a photographer in the Syrian military police, smuggled in 2014 The result that was made in a military hospital, where he said that "killed prisoners" were brought. The corpse in the photos showed signs of hunger, punches, suffocation as well as other torture and killing methods, such as from Report that was created by a team of war crimes attorney and forensic experts.

The destruction of evidence

In the so-called "Palestinian Department" of the military secret service in Southeast Damascus, there are still huge amounts of prisoner files. CNN found evidence of the annihilation of some documents and hard drives by officers before they could flee, but the terror that they exercised was of such an industrial extent that many evidence was left behind.

In an interview for A UN Commission report that was published last year , a former inmate of the Palestinian department described regular blows, blows with a hose and cigarette burns. Other inmates reported sexual abuse and strokes that made the prisoners.

mass graves and torture

The UN report also mentioned that tens of thousands of people were buried by the Syrian regime in mass graves. The US State Department published in 2017 that A crematorium was built in prison Saydnaya . At that time, a US official estimated that up to 50 prisoners could be killed in Saydnaya every day.

The search for answers continues

This story was reported by Clarissa Ward, Brent Swails and Scott McWhinnie in Damascus and Lauren Kent in London and written by Rachel Clarke in Atlanta.