- Rights group compiles list of 547 death certificates
- Says certificates obtained from whistleblowers
- Many certificates were issued long after the date of death
BEIRUT, Dec 20 (Portal) – Ever since Yehya Hijazi and his two sons were arrested by the Syrian government in 2012, their relatives have clung to the hope that they were alive and could one day be released.
But after a decade of silence from authorities, their hopes were dashed when the Independent Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) monitoring group contacted the Hijazi family to let them know they had obtained death certificates for all three.
“You’re hoping every second that you get another glimpse of this person you love dearly, that you hear news from him,” Yehya’s brother Mohammad told Portal by phone from north-west Syria. “Then you hear that he is dead.”
SNHR said the documents confirming the deaths of Yehya and his sons were among 547 detainee death certificates issued by authorities since 2017 and obtained by whistleblowers in government departments.
The rights group said the documents provide answers about the fate of hundreds of missing people. Activists hope they will eventually be used in international trials against the government, which has been charged with crimes against humanity by a UN commission of inquiry over its detention policies.
The government did not respond to emailed questions about the death certificates obtained by the SNHR. Syrian officials have in the past denied allegations of systematic torture and mass executions in prison.
Portal reviewed 80 of the death certificates, including three for the Hijazi family and those for a three-year-old girl and her six-year-old sister.
A Syrian human rights lawyer, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, reviewed a selection of the documents. He said the layout, language used, and information elements included were consistent with other Syrian death certificates.
Portal could not independently confirm the authenticity of the documents.
Mohammad Hijazi said the family did not request death certificates from the authorities because they live in opposition-controlled areas. He added that acquaintances in government-held areas also refused to ask civil registers about deaths, fearing they might be seen as opposed to Damascus.
NO CAUSE OF DEATH
The war in Syria emerged from a 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule and has claimed the lives of over 350,000 people, uprooted more than half the population and displaced millions as refugees abroad.
According to the UN Commission, tens of thousands are said to have been held in the Syrian government’s detention centers. Detainees are often held incommunicado, leaving their families wondering where they are or if they are even alive, the commission and the detainees’ families said.
International human rights groups do not operate openly in Syria and have no access to detention centers. In August, the Office of the UN Secretary-General recommended the establishment of a mechanism to determine the fate of missing Syrians, but this has yet to be established.
Among the 547 certificates are those for 15 children and 19 women, the SNHR said.
Some of the 80 certificates reviewed by Portal listed military hospitals or military tribunals as places of death. Others remained vague about the place of death, “Damascus” or a village on the outskirts of the city. Some stayed empty.
The certificates reviewed by Portal also showed significant gaps between the date of death and its entry in the register, with most showing a lag of several years and one a lag of 10 years.
None of the certificates reviewed by Portal included a cause of death. The SNHR said that was the case for all 547.
The rights group said it compared the names that appeared on the death certificates with broader lists of people arrested by Syrian authorities.
The group was able to reach the families of 23 of the deceased. It said many suspected their loved ones were dead but only received confirmation after seeing the death certificates.
Torture and ill-treatment in Syrian government prisons remain “systemic,” according to a 2022 report by the UN Commission of Inquiry into Syria, which also found abuses in detention centers run by non-governmental factions.
The government was said to have deliberately withheld information from the families of their loved ones and described their detention policies as crimes against humanity.
WAITING CONTINUES
In 2018, the Syrian authorities began updating civil registers in bulk with the death certificates of people who had died in custody but did not directly inform their loved ones, the UN commission said.
The government did not respond to questions about why it had not informed the deceased’s relatives.
Relatives in government-held areas could find out if their loved one had died by requesting their family records from civil status registries. According to the commission and the SNHR, they were not given access to bodies to bury them, nor were they told where the remains were.
Others have learned of deaths by recognizing their loved ones in leaked images taken by military photographers working in prisons, the most prominent of which was codenamed Caesar.
In a 2015 interview, Assad dismissed the Caesar photos as claims without evidence. Former war crimes prosecutors have described the images as clear evidence of systematic torture and mass killings.
SNHR Director Fadel Abdul Ghany said he hoped the flood of death certificates would bring some relief to those still awaiting the fate of their loved ones.
But for Mohammad Hijazi, the wait continues.
Although he now knows his brother Yehya’s fate, he said that 40 other relatives have been arrested by the government in central Syria and the family still has no news of them.
“I couldn’t tell our mother Yehya that she was dead. I just keep telling her he’s still in prison,” he said.
Edited by Tom Perry and David Clarke
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