DAMASCUS (AP) – For
journalist Amer Matar, a decade-long search for his younger brother has defined him and changed the course of his life, now dedicated to researching and documenting crimes committed by Daesh in Syria.
His brother, Mohammed Nour Matar, vanished in Syria’s northern city of Raqqah in 2013 while reporting on an explosion that hit the headquarters of a militant group. His burnt camera was found at the scene of the blast, and his family soon after got word he was in a Daesh prison. But there has been no other sign of him since.
Mohammed Nour is among thousands of people believed to have been seized by Daesh, the terrorist group that in 2014 overran large parts of Syria and Iraq, where it set up a so-called caliphate and brutalized the population for years.
Three years after its territorial defeat, thousands are still missing and accountability for their captors remains elusive. Families of the missing feel abandoned by a world that has largely moved on, while they struggle alone to uncover the fate of their loved ones.
“These violations may constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even genocide in some cases,” the Washington-based Syria Justice and Accountability Center said in a report published on Thursday.
“These families have the right to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones.”
The rights group says that between 2013 and 2017, when Daesh ruled much of northern and eastern Syria, the terrorist group detained thousands who remain missing and whose families continue to live in a state of grief and uncertainty.
In its report titled “Unearthing Hope: The Search for the Missing Victims of Daesh,” SJAC said that around 6,000 bodies have been exhumed from dozens of mass graves dug by Daesh in northeast Syria, and retrieved from buildings destroyed by airstrikes of the U.S.-led coalition during the military campaign that eventually brought down Daesh.
This may amount to approximately half of the total number of missing people in the northeast, according to the group, although estimates of the missing vary.
In the report, SJAC documented for the first time the vast web of detention facilities that were central to Daesh disappearances. Different wings of the Daesh apparatus systematically used this network of 152 police stations, training camps, and secret security prisons to detain kidnapped civilians and members of rival armed groups, in some cases before issuing death sentences or summarily executing them.
It listed 33 detention facilities in the city of Raqqa alone.
SJAC says alleged perpetrators who may hold evidence necessary to identify remains are languishing in prisons of the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led so-called Syrian Democratic Forces “with no fair judicial procedures in sight.”