The first wave of detentions in the new Syria came almost immediately – just after victorious rebels flung open the doors of Bashar al-Assad’s notorious prisons.
As ordinary Syrians stormed detention complexes last December to search for loved ones who had vanished under Assad’s rule, thousands of the deposed dictator’s soldiers who had abandoned their posts – officers and conscripts alike – were taken prisoner by the rebels.
Then came the second wave in late winter: Hundreds of people from Assad’s Alawite sect, mostly men, were seized by the new authorities throughout Syria. Their detentions spiked after a brief uprising along the coast in March killed dozens of security forces, sparking reprisals that left nearly 1,500 Alawites dead. Those arrests continue to this day.
Beginning in summer there was another round of mass detentions, this time in the south among the minority Druze community. It came after hundreds died in an outbreak of sectarian violence, with government forces accused of summary executions and other abuses.
Throughout, there were other detentions from all denominations in the name of security: large numbers of people, many from Syria’s Sunni majority, accused of vague links to
Assad; human-rights activists; Christians who say they have been shaken down for information or money; Shi’ites picked up at checkpoints and accused of ties with Iran or Hezbollah.
Prisons and lockups that jailed tens of thousands of people during Assad’s rule are now crowded with Syrians detained by President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s security forces and held without formal charges, a Reuters investigation has found.
Reuters compiled the names of at least 829 people who have been detained on security grounds since Assad’s demise a year ago, according to interviews with family members of the detainees and people who themselves were in detention. In reaching this number, Reuters also reviewed some lists of detainees created by people who organized family
visits to seven facilities.
Interviews, lists of detainees and multiple accounts of overcrowding in the prisons and lockups suggest that the number of security detainees is considerably higher than the tally that Reuters was able to establish.
