Children are still trapped and missing in Syria’s abyss

March 11, 2013, seems like an ordinary date, but for one Syrian family, it marked the beginning of an ordeal that continues to this day. What started as a nightmare soon unfolded into a humanitarian issue that touched the lives of innocent children in a way that shames the very notion of justice. Syrian dentist and national chess champion Rania al-Abbasi, born in 1970, and her six children were forcibly disappeared in Bashar Al-Assad’s prisons—just two days after her husband, Abdul Rahman Yassin, was arrested.

Rania al-Abbasi and her family

Rania al-Abbasi and her family

Rania al-Abbasi’s children

Rania al-Abbasi’s children

Amnesty International documented the details of their arrest and disappearance. In addition, Without Just Cause, a US State Department campaign advocating for political prisoners worldwide, called on the Assad regime to reveal the family’s fate. Rania’s secretary, Majdoline al-Kadi, was at the house at the time of the arrest and also forcibly disappeared along with the family. Her fate remains unknown.

Rania’s sister, Dr. Naela al-Abbasi, told Raseef22 that the only information they were able to gather about Rania’s fate after her arrest was that she was held in the notorious “Branch 215.” This was confirmed by a doctor who was detained at the same time as Rania, who later informed the family that she had heard Rania’s name and the voices of her children before she left the branch.

"The three siblings spent nine months in detention. When I arrived as a detainee, I was shocked to find them alive. The girls told me that their family had held a funeral for them and their brother after receiving their identification cards from security forces claiming they were dead."

Branch 215, affiliated with the Military Security (Military Intelligence) and known as the “Raid Squad,” is infamous for its brutal torture methods. A 2014 report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) described the atrocities committed there as a “Syrian Holocaust.” The report, based on survivor testimonies, provided credible evidence of the systematic abuse inside the branch.

“We paid large sums of money to lawyers and security officials, hoping to obtain any information about my sister and her children, but all our efforts failed,” Naela recalls. “We then turned to international organizations such as Amnesty International, which sent official letters to Bashar al-Assad and Bashar Jaafari [Syria’s former representative to the UN] demanding answers about Rania’s fate. There was no response. Even during the Astana talks, the UN’s special envoy at the time, Staffan de Mistura, made a direct request to Jaafari to disclose the family’s whereabouts, but Jaafari denied that they were ever in the regime’s prisons.”

The horrors of Assad’s prisons and the fate of Rania’s family

Rania’s case resurfaced after the dramatic events of December 8, 2024, when footage emerged showing the opening of Assad’s prisons following his regime’s collapse. Freed detainees walked out with erased memories, while desperate families demanded DNA testing for those who had emerged unrecognizably disfigured by torture. Some mothers were seen digging with their bare hands in search of imagined secret cells that might still hold their loved ones. Meanwhile, hospital morgues stored bodies of detainees marked only with numbers on their chests or foreheads, their faces unrecognizable.

"When I was in 'Palestine Branch,' a six-year-old boy was detained with his mother and grandmother for an entire month. During that time, he ate the prison’s poor-quality food, heard verbal abuse directed at female detainees, and witnessed the miserable condition we were in after torture sessions. After a month, a security officer came and took him, claiming he would 'hand him over to his grandfather'."

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a non-governmental human rights organization, the number of mass graves discovered and documented since Assad’s fall had reached 15 on January 29, and contained the remains of 1,608 victims. These included four mass graves in the Damascus countryside, including in Homs, Deir ez-Zor, and the city of Al Bukamal, along with two in Daraa, and one in Hama.

"They raped a woman in front of me [...] and butchered a young man with a machete."

It is nearly impossible to fathom what Rania’s six children—Dima (14), Intissar (11), Najah (9), Walaa (8), Ahmad (4), and Layan (1.5)—may have endured in Assad’s prisons. A chilling testimony from Raneem Awdeh, a 30-year-old former detainee, provides a small glimpse into what it means for a child to live in Assad’s detention centers.

Raneem, who was detained in ‘Military Security Branch 235’, also known as the notorious Far' Falastin or the ‘Palestine Branch’—where local and international human rights organizations have documented dozens of testimonies from former detainees—confirms the presence of children in the prisons and detention centers she was transferred between during her imprisonment.

"When I was in Palestine Branch, a six-year-old boy was detained with his mother and grandmother for an entire month. During that time, he ate the prison’s poor-quality food, heard verbal abuse directed at female detainees, and witnessed the miserable condition we were in after torture sessions," she explains.

She adds, "After a month, his mother’s condition deteriorated due to cancer. A security officer came and took him, claiming he would 'hand him over to his grandfather.' The boy left, and we never really knew if he made it to his relatives."

Raneem recalls witnessing a pregnant woman, four months along, being beaten on her back and stomach during her detention at the ‘Palestine Branch’. "I don't know if she was already pregnant when she was arrested or if she conceived in prison as a result of sexual assault during torture. All I know is that she bled heavily after miscarrying."

The former detainee, a Palestinian Syrian, recounts that she also met two sisters from the Golan Heights inside the Palestine Branch: Ghufran (14) and Samah (16). They told her about their brother, Mohammad (17), who had been arrested with them outside a bakery, on charges of "bringing down a regime aircraft with a DShK heavy machine gun."

"The siblings spent nine months in detention, first in 'Khatib Branch,' then in 'Regional Security,' and finally ended up in 'Palestine Branch,'” Raneem continues. “When I arrived as a detainee, I was shocked to find them alive. The girls told me that their family had held a funeral for them and their brother after receiving their identification cards from security forces, who claimed they were dead."

She recalls witnessing a pregnant woman, four months along, being beaten on her back and stomach during her detention at the ‘Palestine Branch’. She adds, "I don't know if she was already pregnant when she was arrested or if she conceived in prison as a result of sexual assault during torture. All I know is that she bled heavily after miscarrying."

There is growing speculation that some cases of pregnancy among detainees in Assad's prisons are the result of rape, used as a form of torture and abuse. Recently leaked documents suggest that children conceived in detention have been placed in state-run care facilities. One such document was shared by Hassan al-Abbasi on his Facebook account.

When asked by Raseef22 about the verification or any documentation of such claims—specifically, whether births have occurred as a result of rape in the fallen regime’s detention centers—Fadel Abdulghany, founder and head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), based in The Hague, stated that no document they receive is considered valid without thorough verification. He described the verification process as "complex and ongoing," explaining that "each document contains codes and encryption that need to be deciphered."

"What we have confirmed is that children make up more than 2% of the total number of detainees—a terrifying figure,” Fadel tells Raseef22. “There are two main accounts regarding their detention: some were arrested alongside their parents, while others were detained alone on charges of participating in protests, humanitarian work, or other activities."

"To this day, I cannot erase the image of that young man from my nightmares… They subjected him to electric shocks, then immediately doused him with water, and he died on the spot. Afterward, an officer turned to me and asked, 'Still not willing to talk?' Then he ordered one of the guards to bring a machete. They dismembered the young man's body right in front of me."

"In a separate room, four officers took turns raping a female detainee in front of me to terrorize me. They demanded that I provide them with the names of 400 so-called 'terrorists,'” Raneem responded to Raseef22 when asked if she had witnessed cases of rape inside the prisons. “They had accused me of being a media activist collaborating with defected officers and claimed that I had infiltrated the camp to plant a car bomb there."

However, Raneem describes rape as "a minor ordeal compared to the horrors" and types of torture she witnessed inside Assad's prisons.

"To this day, I cannot erase the image of that young man from my nightmares… They subjected him to electric shocks, just as they did to me, but then immediately doused him with water, and he died on the spot. Afterward, an officer turned to me and asked, 'Still not willing to talk?' Then he ordered one of the guards to bring a machete. They dismembered the young man's body right in front of me as a tactic of psychological warfare to force me to reveal the names they wanted."

Raneem recounts that she was arrested on September 14, 2013, while walking through the Yarmouk refugee camp to pass the time as she waited for some official documents to be scanned and sent to her brother in Egypt. He needed the papers before embarking on a trip to Britain by boat.

"They took me to the 'General Command' after getting phone approval from Ahmed Jibril—the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), notorious as 'the Butcher of Tripoli and Yarmouk'—who instructed them to contact Suhayl al-Hasan (the special forces commander known as 'Assad's favorite soldier'). They beat me savagely, tied a cable around my neck, and dragged me, intending to kill me, but the cable snapped. Then, they took me, bloodied, to the 'Palestine Branch,' where my nightmare truly began," she recalls.

Raneem emphasizes that security officers ripped out her toenails and forced her to bow in prayer before a portrait of Bashar al-Assad when they saw her praying. "My family paid the equivalent of $200,000 to secure my release after five and a half months in detention," Raneem concludes.

"They arrested my father and turned our home into military barracks."

Another thread of fear haunts Rania’s family and the fate of her and her children. Halim Abu Kazem, an officer in the Military Security Branch stationed at the Wazzan Bridge checkpoint in the Dummar district, was notorious for committing horrific abuses against detainees. He was responsible for her arrest, according to what neighbors later informed Rania's family.

Photo of Halim Abu Kazem.

Photo of Halim Abu Kazem.

Abu Kazem's brutality is well-known. Abdul Karim Ghannam shares with Raseef22 the ordeal his family endured under Abu Kazem, which began on March 7, 2013, when his father, Abdul Ali, was taken from their home in Dummar, near the Wazzan checkpoint in Damascus, by security forces from Branch 215.

For years, the family could find no trace of their forcibly disappeared father—until they came across the leaked Caesar photographs. His emaciated, tortured body was among the thousands of victims documented in those images.

"My father was arrested under the accusation of funding terrorism. He used to help the poor in our mosque and neighborhood. 'Branch 215' seized control of our large family home. He had worked for the Kuwaiti Al-Wazzan family and was living in their mansion with their permission after they left the country. He had always been on good terms with security personnel who roamed freely in the garden of the estate—until Halim Abu Kazem came one night and dragged him from his bed in the most humiliating way," Abdul Karim says.

Photo of Abdul Ali Ghannam.

Photo of Abdul Ali Ghannam.

This happened, he adds, "after my sister fled the house when the officers tried to arrest her too. Our home was turned into military barracks, and our family was displaced—scattered between eastern Qalamoun, northern Syria, Turkey, and Europe."

When Abdul Karim returned to Idlib after the regime fell, he found the house nearly destroyed, filled with chaos and abandoned military documents, which he later handed over to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the new governing authority in the region.

Photos show the chaos left behind by "Branch 215" inside the Ghannam family home.

Photos show the chaos left behind by "Branch 215" inside the Ghannam family home.

Photos show the chaos left behind by "Branch 215" inside the Ghannam family home.

Photos show the chaos left behind by "Branch 215" inside the Ghannam family home.

Photos show the chaos left behind by "Branch 215" inside the Ghannam family home.

A document listing names of "Branch 215" personnel found inside the Ghannam family home.

A document listing names of "Branch 215" personnel found inside the Ghannam family home.

Rania’s children expose Assad’s crimes

Returning to Abbasi’s case, her brother, engineer Hassan, who resides in Canada, tells Raseef22 that "Rania was arrested two days after her husband was taken from their residence in Dummar, near the Wazzan checkpoint. She was detained along with her six children and her secretary by Halim Abu Kazem, the officer in charge of the checkpoint, under the accusation of financing terrorist organizations.

“She was detained simply because she had provided humanitarian aid worth $65 to a young man from Homs who lived in the same building. The man and his mother had proposed supplying food baskets to families fleeing Assad’s bombardment in Homs to Damascus during the month of Ramadan."

According to what the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has documented, at least 30,000 Syrian children have been killed since March 2011. More than 23,000 of them were killed by the forces of the now-collapsed regime, while 5,298 children remain detained or forcibly disappeared by various parties involved in the conflict.

"That handful of dollars was the ‘crime’ that led to the disappearance of an entire family in the tyrant’s prisons. The security forces took the young man, bleeding, to force him to lead them to Rania’s home, where they arrested her husband,” Hassan adds. “The next day, they returned, seizing gold jewelry, laptops, and two cars. On the third day, they arrested Rania, her children, and her secretary."

Today, Rania’s case is the subject of local and international public concern. After the regime’s collapse, the fate of the Abbasi children resurfaced, revealing the horrors they endured. Their father, Dr. Abdul Rahman Yassin, had succumbed to torture—his photo was found among the ‘Caesar photographs’ a year after his arrest. Based on the visible torture marks and the state of his clothing, his brother-in-law Hassan believes he died just days after his disappearance. The Abbasi family, who we contacted, declined to publish the image out of respect for the Yassin family.

Naila al-Abbasi, a relative, tells us that in 2014, they received a call confirming that four of Rania’s children were being held in SOS Children's Villages. This information was reaffirmed in 2021 by another source, who later warned that in 2022, the children were transferred to an unknown location.

The Abbasi family is haunted by disturbing scenarios. Hassan al-Abbasi says, "Tragic thoughts cross our minds from time to time about the fate of Rania’s children. At one point, we even searched through images of young women in sex trafficking networks in Europe, looking for any resemblance to Rania’s daughters. Can you imagine the depths to which we’ve been driven?"

SOS Children's Villages was established in Syria in 1975, with the first village opening in Damascus in 1981. The organization is a branch of the international SOS Children's Villages Federation, headquartered in Austria, which operates in 136 countries around the world. The federation provides long-term family care for orphaned and abandoned children. However, in Syria, many suspicions surround its operations and its ties to the Assad family.

On December 14, 2024, SOS Children's Villages released a statement acknowledging that they had cooperated with a representative of Rania’s family to investigate Hassan’s accusations that the organization was holding some of his sister’s children under false identities. The organization concluded, "We have no information about their families."

A few days later, the organization issued another statement admitting that the now-collapsed regime had forcibly placed children in its facilities—children who had been “separated from their families during the conflict without proper documentation of their origins” during the conflict period up until 2019. The statement added that the organization had called on the authorities to stop referring these children to them and asserted, "none of these children remain in our care today."

SOS Children's Villages, which had previously received personal support from Asma al-Assad, operated branches in several Syrian provinces, including Aleppo and Latakia. A new village was also opened in 2017 in southwestern Damascus, near the Lebanese border. Rumors persist that Assad’s wife had established a secret facility within the organization specifically for the children of detainees and those born in prisons and detention centers.

The truth slowly unfolds

After the fall of the regime, Hassan made extensive efforts to find any lead that could help him locate at least one of his sister’s children. He had long lost hope that his sister was still alive after all these years and after learning about the horrors of Assad’s prisons. However, he remains astounded that "six young siblings could disappear without leaving a single trace."

"All the new Syrian administration has done for us is repaint the security branches and remove the pictures of our missing detainees from Al-Marjeh Square!"

The Abbasi family continues to follow new developments, clinging to even the slightest hope of recovering Rania’s children.

"Perhaps you followed with us the story of Alaa Rajoub, the child who was arrested with his uncle at the age of seven, had his identity erased, and was renamed Nassif after being transferred to the Lahn al-Hayat care complex, or Melody of Life Homes (formerly known as Dar Zeid),” says Naila. “We rejoiced when Alaa was reunited with his biological sister. There is also the case of Adnan Badra, among many other testimonies that are emerging day by day."

Earlier this month, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor had uncovered "secret correspondence” and confidential documents confirming that children had been transferred from prisons and detention centers to orphanages.

The ministry's media office issued an appeal: "We urge the families of missing children to visit the relevant local social affairs and labor offices to submit their children’s names and any information that might aid in locating them and conducting an accurate count of these cases."

One of the challenges complicating the search is that the children’s names were never compiled into a single file. Instead, each child’s transfer was documented individually, with false identities assigned to them within the institutions that housed them.

Shocking revelations

In this context, Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), told BBC that nearly 400 Syrian children had been transferred from Syrian security branches to Syrian orphanages. He confirmed that he currently possesses at least 30 official security documents stamped by the former Minister of Interior under Assad’s regime, Mohammad al-Rahmoun, along with signatures from high-ranking security officials. Meanwhile, around 130 of these children have been reunited with their families.

"We have been working on this issue since 2013, hoping to gain cooperation from the new administration to locate the remaining children. Let’s be realistic—directors of these orphanages were partners of Asma al-Assad,” Rami added. They received the children along with papers marked ‘Top Secret.’ We demand an investigation into their role to determine where these children are today, especially since some were removed from orphanages upon turning 18 and placed in apartments where they were exploited in unethical work. Others were conscripted into the regime’s forces, and some fled to Lebanon, where we were able to document their return."

As of today, 5,298 children remain detained or forcibly disappeared by various parties involved in the conflict, including 3,702 at the hands of Syrian regime forces.

In additional comments to Al Arabiya AlHadath, Rami stated that these 400 children were primarily placed in four specific care facilities or foster homes. He pointed out that some of the documents recorded only the child’s first name and age. He also revealed that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has evidence that Syrian children who had been separated from their families were exploited in drug trafficking, and some reportedly died as a result of medical experiments conducted on them.

The Abbasi family is haunted by these disturbing scenarios. "Tragic thoughts cross our minds from time to time about the fate of Rania’s children,” says Hassan. “At one point, we even searched through images of young women in sex trafficking networks in Europe, looking for any resemblance to Rania’s daughters. Can you imagine the depths to which we’ve been driven?"

He also confirms that multiple potential scenarios complicate the search for the six siblings, including the possibility that some children were deported to Russia to be exploited on the frontlines in Ukraine. In 2018, Euronews published a report stating that Syrian children between the ages of 10 and 15 had arrived in Moscow for "military training." The European news agency stated that the Syrian embassy in Moscow had confirmed this, explaining that this was part of a permanent and annual agreement under which Syrian children received training within the Russian cadet corps. According to Euronews, Russia issued a decree regarding this arrangement in July of that year.

Another scenario that haunts Hassan stems from unverified rumors he read on social media about Syrian detainees being transferred to Russia for organ trafficking.

Another major factor complicating the search for forcibly disappeared children and adults is the chaos that accompanied the emptying of prisons and detention centers. Countless documents and files were lost in the disorder. In this regard, lawyer and political researcher Ihab Abed Rabbo condemns the "chaos" in handling detention facilities, emphasizing that "security branches are crime scenes and should be safeguarded against tampering so that criminal evidence is not lost," including documents that could reveal the fate of forcibly disappeared children.

Who is responsible and who must be convicted in this case?

In addition to Asma al-Assad, whom many consider the most responsible party in "this thorny case," Abdul Rahman insists that the primary blame lies with "Bashar al-Assad’s security apparatus and the directors of orphanages. They are neither innocent nor saints. They knew exactly what was happening," he told the BBC.

Some families expressed their disappointment with the way the new administration has addressed the issue of forcibly disappeared persons. Many found the meeting between Syrian President al-Sharaa and the mother of American journalist Austin Tice "deeply provocative," saying it reinforced the notion that "an American citizen holds more value than the hundreds of thousands of missing Syrians whose families are still waiting for even the smallest acknowledgment from the new leadership."

Through Al Arabiya AlHadath, Rami also called for holding all those implicated in this case accountable in "a public trial, including Iranians, Syrians, Assad regime loyalists, and Hezbollah members." He also expressed concerns that orphanage directors involved in these crimes might attempt to destroy key documents related to the case.

Notably, Rana Mouaffaq al-Baba, the director of Al-Mabarrah Association in Damascus, admitted in an interview on Al Arabiya AlHadath that she personally received children from security branches through official paperwork stamped by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, mandating their placement in the institution. She stated, "I’d sign the document, and a copy would go to the intelligence services, where I pledged not to reveal the children’s names to anyone or even inform their families. Of course, it was painful, but I could never disclose their names."

Similarly, Naila expressed her astonishment at how orphanage directors and staff have openly discussed the detention of children of political prisoners "without the slightest sense of guilt or responsibility!" She was referring to Baraa al-Ayoubi, the director of Dar al-Rahma Orphanage, who admitted in a media interview that she felt no remorse for the fate of these children, since, “personally, she was only providing them with good care.”

A mysterious and sensitive case

There are no precise estimates of the number of forcibly disappeared persons in Syria. However, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), at least 113,218 people remain forcibly disappeared as of August 2024, having vanished since March 2011. Among them, at least 136,614 people are either arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared by various parties involved in the conflict in prisons and detention centers controlled by the Assad regime.

According to the Bridges of Truth project, a joint initiative between the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and eight Syrian civil society organizations, in a 2021 report, this system is “an untold darkness into which Syrians continue to disappear. An unknown number of citizens have also disappeared while fleeing the conflict or perished in it as uncounted casualties.”

On June 29, 2023, the United Nations General Assembly approved the establishment of a new international body to investigate the fate of missing persons in Syria.

"What we have confirmed is that children make up more than 2% of the total number of detainees – a terrifying figure. Some were arrested alongside their parents, while others were detained alone on charges of participating in protests, humanitarian work, or other activities." — Fadel Abdulghany, founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR)

According to the 13th Annual Report on Violations Against Children in Syria, published by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on November 20, 2024, the network's founder and chairman, Fadel Abdulghany, told Raseef22 that at least 30,293 Syrian children have been documented as killed since March 2011. Among them, 225 were killed under torture. Of this staggering number, more than 23,000 children died at the hands of the fallen regime's forces.

Additionally, 5,298 children remain detained or forcibly disappeared by various parties to the conflict during the same period. Of these, 3,702 were taken by Syrian regime forces, according to the same source.

Reliable evidence and other claims awaiting verification

Abed Rabbo told Raseef22 that there is forensic evidence proving the involvement of the Assad regime and various security agencies in the arrest of minors under the age of eighteen, subjecting them to severe abuses that ultimately led to their deaths. He provided us with a folder of Caesar photographs of the child victims as evidence.

Abed Rabbo was part of the Caesar team from the outset. The team successfully smuggled 55,000 photos of detainees who perished under torture in Assad’s prisons and detention centers out of Syria. This played a major role in the 2019 passage of the US House of Representatives’ Caesar Act, which imposed severe sanctions on the Assad regime and its associates—sanctions that have also had devastating economic and social consequences for the Syrian people.

Abdulghany highlighted an SNHR statement issued on January 23, 2025, which includes "verified lists of about 3,700 children that were forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime." The statement asserts that for years, the network has received reports indicating that the regime was forcibly taking children from their families or transferring them from detention centers to orphanages or care facilities that have never been properly investigated due to numerous challenges.

One of the most prominent institutions named in the report is “SOS,” which housed many of these children without official documents proving their origins. However, this practice reportedly changed after the center underwent new management in 2019, at which point children began arriving with some documentation. Among the most notoriously unresolved cases is that of Dr. Rania al-Abbasi’s children.

"My family and I feel crushed, humiliated, and betrayed by this administration, which seems to have sold off the detainees’ cause and abandoned accountability altogether. Instead of wasting time hosting social media influencers, the government should have focused on searching for detainees’ children thrown in orphanages. All we, as families of missing detainees, are asking for is a little dignity. We echo the cry of the families of the forcibly disappeared, when they chanted at the top of their lungs in Umayyad Square: 'Our detainees are not dead without proof or evidence!'"

What responsibility lies with the new administration?

When asked about the role of Syria’s new administration in handling the case of the Abbasi family—and what they expect from it—Naila al-Abbasi stated that they are coordinating with an international investigative committee, given Syria’s limited capabilities and the devastating toll the war has taken on the country.

In more clear terms, Hassan expressed his disappointment with the way the new administration has addressed the issue of forcibly disappeared persons. He pointed to Syrian President al-Sharaa's recent meeting with the mother of Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria while working for Agence France-Presse (AFP), The Washington Post, and other global media outlets.

Hassan found the meeting "deeply provocative," saying it reinforced the notion that "an American citizen holds more value than the hundreds of thousands of missing and disappeared Syrians whose families are still waiting for even the smallest acknowledgment from the new leadership."

"All the new administration has done for us is repaint the security branches and remove the pictures of detainees from Al-Marjeh Square!" He expresses his frustration over "the involvement of remnants of the former regime in the political and media scene, with some being reappointed within the new administration, such as Judge Mohammad Yassin al-Qazzaz and Fadel Najjar." Notably, al-Qazzaz resigned after his appointment sparked public outrage.

A recent statement by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) called on the new administration to consider the issue of forcibly disappeared children of detainees as a national and humanitarian priority and to launch a comprehensive investigation with the participation of both local and international organizations to ensure justice and uncover the truth.

Hassan also expresses his deep disappointment over the “failure” of Fadi al-Qassem, the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor in the transitional government, to make any progress in locating his sister Rania’s children. "My family and I feel crushed, humiliated, and betrayed by this administration, which seems to have sold off the detainees’ cause and abandoned accountability altogether. Instead of wasting time hosting social media influencers, the government should have focused on searching for detainees’ children thrown in orphanages. All we, as families of missing detainees, are asking for is a little dignity. We echo the cry of the families of the forcibly disappeared, when they chanted at the top of their lungs in Umayyad Square: 'Our detainees are not dead without proof or evidence!'"

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) issued a new statement last week calling on the new administration to consider the issue of forcibly disappeared children of detainees as a national and humanitarian priority and to launch a comprehensive investigation with the participation of both local and international organizations to ensure justice and uncover the truth.

The SNHR statement also urged the SOS organization to conduct an independent internal investigation, share all relevant files with the current administration in Syria, and issue a formal written apology along with fair compensation to the families of these children.

Additionally, the network has appealed to international organizations and the United Nations to investigate how these children were transferred from security branches to orphanages, to document their numbers and uncover their identities. The call includes demands for a thorough investigation into orphanages to detect any falsification of personal records, determine whether the children were subjected to abuse, and clarify their fate if they were relocated. The statement also calls for holding accountable all those responsible, including security branch officials, orphanage directors, and association leaders, as well as anyone who participated in, covered up, or neglected the issue, thereby contributing to the suffering of the children and their families.

Despite the family's relentless efforts, they have yet to obtain any useful or meaningful information about the fate of Rania’s children. Today, Hassan pleads with anyone who can help to share even the smallest piece of information that might lead to his sister’s children.

"Recently, someone reached out to me, telling me about a young man who bore a strong resemblance to Rania’s son, Ahmad. We immediately sought a DNA test to confirm or dispel our suspicions. But our hope faded when we realized that Ahmad's age would not match that of the young man."

Meanwhile, the fate of Rania’s children—along with countless others who disappeared into the darkness of detention centers—remains shrouded in uncertainty, particularly given the chaos that engulfed security branch records and documents following Assad’s downfall.