According to Anas Al Kharboutli’s family, the journalist frequently complained about being under surveillance receiving threatening messages on his phone. His killing was no accident and he was no casualty.  His death is the result of a deliberate attempt to target a group of journalists, as revealed in the RSF documentary “Syria: the forbidden witnesses of the Assad regime,” released in December 2025.

This strategy of spying and targeting — one of the deadliest policies implemented by any regime since the turn of the century — claimed the lives of 181 journalists in Syria between the 2011 revolution and the regime’s fall in December 2024 and relied on a near-obsessive level of surveillance of all the people trying to tell Syria’s story from within. Drawing on first-hand accounts and supporting documents, the investigation conducted by SIRAJ in partnership with RSF reveals the inner workings of this ruthless surveillance machine.

“Security without borders”

From the first months of the popular uprising against Bashar al-Assad in 2011, journalists became a preferred target of the regime, alongside opponents and demonstrators. As conduits of news on the protest movement and witnesses to the massacres committed by the authorities against their own people, journalists were an especially troublesome presence. The regime’s survival depended in part on its ability to hunt them down.

When contacted by RSF, a former member of the Department of Foreign Media Affairs at the Ministry of Information described the regime’s astonishment at being caught off guard by the spread of the uprising. The authorities then ordered that foreign journalists be systematically accompanied “to places selected in advance,” where “civilians” — who were intelligence agents in reality — would explain to them that the demonstrations were part of a “Western plot designed to support terrorism.”

The threat was deemed so serious that the Central Crisis Management Cell — a committee created at the start of the revolution to coordinate the regime’s response — was given a direct role in monitoring the media. This body, which brought together the heads of the main intelligence services, senior military officials and the Ministers of the Interior and Defence, was notably tasked with producing detailed reports on the activities of media outlets and journalists.

As this investigation shows, the entire state apparatus was involved in implementing this strategy. Having inherited a far-reaching culture of Soviet-style surveillance and influence, Syria became “security without borders,” as one source who worked at the Ministry of Information for more than 10 years ironically put it. Interviewed by SIRAJ, former Deputy Minister of Information Taleb Qadi Amin (2003–2008) confirmed that journalists who contacted the authorities to obtain a visa were in fact dealing with “a system riddled with surveillance that began at the borders.”

The system often relied on technical surveillance. Contacted by SIRAJ, a former military intelligence officer responsible for interceptions described a scene in March 2011 in which his entire team listened live, over loudspeakers, to calls made by Reuters journalist Suleiman al-Khalidi, “as if we were attending a conference.” When the reporter said to his contact, “I am at the door,” he was arrested immediately.

A blacklist of foreign journalists

SIRAJ, which carried out a methodical search of several institutional sites used for political and security-related matters after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024, found dozens of documents attesting to this constant surveillance in the archives of Syria’s Air Force Intelligence, the country’s most powerful security agency. Similar documents were also found in the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) and the archives of Branch 291, a military counter-espionage unit notably tasked with monitoring infiltration risks and collaboration with foreign actors, as well as in those of .

By pouring over these archives, SIRAJ discovered that an intelligence operation targeting its very reporters had been approved in October 2024, only weeks before the fall of the regime. Nicknamed “the Spider,” GID director Hossam Louka, a man sanctioned by the European Union, ordered “posts abroad” to obtain “the detailed identities of the agents operating this suspicious platform under the guise of journalists.”

Among the recovered documents was a “blacklist” of foreign journalists. Dated 4 March 2013, it was initially drawn up by the Ministry of Information and was found in a General Intelligence Directorate note addressed to its director. The list included the names of 148 journalists who had “entered Syria illegally” over the previous two years. Ruth Sherlock, correspondent for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, was described as having published a “very negative” report after spending several months in Idlib, a city in north-western Syria. The list also included the names of US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik. Both were killed on 22 February 2012 in a planned and premeditated bombardment, according to accounts gathered by RSF and SIRAJ in a joint investigation into their murder.

Being placed on this blacklist could spell disaster for the journalists on it. The document was sent to several intelligence branches for “action,” and as the former military intelligence officer in charge of communications surveillance confirmed, the people placed on it very often ended up “either killed or arrested.”

Generally speaking, Syrian journalists who were simply doing their job were branded as terrorists by the authorities. As for correspondents appearing in Western media outlets, “they were considered potential agents,” he said. All of them were therefore legitimate military targets in the eyes of the regime.

Arnaud Froger

• Source: Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 

The post Assad’s war on journalists: inside Syria’s surveillance machine appeared first on SIRAJ.

A relative, Abdullatif Rajbou, described the tragedy to SIRAJ during a visit to Jana’s family, who had recently returned after 12 years of displacement to live amid the ruins of their destroyed home in rural Latakia. He also spoke of the constant fear of hidden landmines: ‘Demining teams removed 140 mines from my land, including a tank mine, as well as eight detonators for which we did not find the associated mines. We are not afraid of the mines we can see, but rather those that are hidden.’

The ‘hidden mines’ Abdullatif refers to are not confined to the village of Ako. They are a reality experienced by thousands of Syrians in areas that were previously on the front line between Syrian opposition forces and the Syrian regime forces. Those areas are now littered with mines and unexploded remnants of war, posing a continuing threat that may persist for years to the lives and futures of Syrians returning home. 

This investigation by the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit – Siraj draws on open-source tools, interviews with residents and victims, and field visits to examine the reality and conditions in some of the towns and villages that previously lay along former frontlines in the southern countryside of Idlib, Hama and Latakia. It documents the suffering of their residents due to the danger, including the human, livelihood and environmental costs they pay as a result, and the impact on the present and future return of displaced Syrians. 

By collecting dozens of reported deaths and injuries in that area using open-source material and databases maintained by independent organisations, determining approximate geographical locations, and tracking patterns of those incidents, our investigation concludes that agricultural land was a primary target of minelaying along the line of contact. 

Based on observed mining patterns in specific areas of the former frontline, our investigation estimates that 13,700 hectares of agricultural and civilian land remain at risk from mines. According to this report, the cost of demining this area alone amounts to US$137 million (approximately SYP 15.2 billion at the official exchange rate). 

The investigation team also conducted field visits in rural Hama and Latakia, which enabled us to document the most prominent types of mines scattered in that area. Many were manufactured in the Soviet era and were held by the former government’s forces, posing a threat to civilians, civilian vehicles and military vehicles.  

The landmines are closely linked to the 14-year military campaign waged by the former Syrian regime against the opposition between 2011 and 2024, and to the repeated shifts in control over large parts of the country—especially in what later became known as the “lines of contact”.

The line of contact: a method of collective punishment 

The areas known as the ‘line of contact’ include southern Idlib province and large areas of eastern rural Aleppo, as well as Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib, extending to the Kurdish and Turkmen mountains in western rural Latakia and continuing through northern Sahel al-Ghab in rural Hama. 

The region includes dozens of towns and villages, including Ma’arat al-Nu’man, al-Bara and Kafr Nabl in the Idlib countryside, Qastoun, al-Ankawi, al-Ziara and al-Sarmaniya in the Hama countryside, and Ako in the Latakia countryside. Since the formation of the “line of contact” in early 2020, these areas have been a clear target for mining operations by Assad regime forces, which caused hundreds of deaths and injuries until the fall of the regime. Today, returnees face the same threat that prevents them from settling in the villages they were forced to abandon years ago. 

To gain a deeper understanding of the reality of this region, the SIRAJ team, with support from the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), conducted research using open-source data on reported deaths and injuries caused by mines recorded by various civilian and humanitarian sources in these ‘line of contact’ areas. The team also extracted data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED)’s database, an independent US-based non-profit organisation that documents data on armed conflicts around the world. 

Based on this research, the investigation recorded 75 deaths and injuries caused by mines between January 2020 and till the end of 2024, when Assad’s regime fell. This only accounts for a fraction of the overall civilian harm caused. 

According to Maysara al-Hassan, commander of engineering operations in the Syrian Ministry of Defence’s 80th Division, the number of deaths and injuries caused by mines in these contact line areas between 2020 and 2024 is estimated to total 15,000 cases.

Statistics based on open-source data helped the team map the towns and villages that have seen documented and reported cases of mine victims to form a broader understanding of the patterns of targeting that this region has experienced through the use of mine laying, with civilians bearing the brunt of the impact. 

The cases analysed by the investigation team show that mines caused the deaths of 58 civilians, including three demining volunteers and injured eight others. Vehicles belonging to the White Helmets (now known as the Civil Defence) were also destroyed while carrying out relief work in those areas. 

A clear and recurring pattern emerged: mines were heavily concentrated in agricultural land. This directly contributed to many of the deaths and severe injuries, as farmers returned to cultivate fields and were killed or maimed by explosives. 

Warning: Some links on the map contain graphic images. Please exercise caution. 

This pattern that SIRAJ has observed and documented is not a coincidence. In an interview with SIRAJ, Muayad al-Nofali, director of operations at the non-governmental organisation Halo Trust, which specialises in mine clearance, said that “the Syrian regime was carrying out mining operations with the aim of protecting its forces and directly harming civilians.” Therefore, it deliberately targeted all civilian facilities, such as schools and agricultural land, in areas along the front-line. 

The director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Fadel Abdul Ghani, echoed this view, adding that the regime was working to contaminate agricultural land with mines to weaken the livelihoods and production of the population, and as a form of collective punishment. He said the former government also failed to provide maps of minefields or warning signs, thereby increasing the likelihood of casualties after areas fell out of its control. 

Abdul Razzaq Qantar, director of victim support at the Syrian National Mine Action Centre at the Syrian Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management, also warned that these agricultural areas are among the most heavily contaminated areas due to the intensive minelaying. 

Indiscriminate mining and ongoing retaliation 

The policy of retaliation after losing control, referred to by Abdul Ghani, has killed thousands and left many more with permanent injuries and disabilities. SNHR has documented the deaths of 3,485 people, including 872 children, from landmine explosions between March 2011 and the beginning of this year (2026). 

Since the fall of Assad in particular, mines have killed 607 people, including 177 children, and injured 1,087 people, including 443 children, between 8 December 2024 and 16 January 2026, according to Abdulrazzaq Qantar. 

Among those injured is farmer Muhammad Marai Mazan, who was injured by a mine explosion on his farmland near the village of al-Ziara, north of Sahel Al-Ghab in Hama governorate, in December 2025. 

Mazan, who grows wheat and vegetables to support his wife and six children (aged between two and fifteen), said he was injured after pulling a strange black string on his land for fear that it would get caught in the harvester. This caused a mine planted about 2.5 metres away to detonate. The shrapnel burned the right side of his body, disfigured his face and arm and the loss of sight in his right eye, as well as damage to his left eye. These injuries continue to hinder his ability to work to this day. 

Mazan explains that his land is located near military headquarters that belonged to the former regime’s army, and that the incident came as a shock to him because the area had previously been cleared of mines and the land had been ploughed. He adds that the mines were cleared by ‘a volunteer from the village of al-Sarmaniya who was also killed by a mine’. 

The 47-year-old farmer now visits the doctor weekly for treatment of his left eye, after undergoing an initial operation. He also suffers from constant pain due to being bedridden for more than a month after his injury. Mazan insists his case is not unique in the area. Al-Nofali, from Halo Trust, described the minelaying as indiscriminate. He explains that “the regime had no clear methodology for planting mines. In addition, Russian forces also planted some minefields, as did Iranian and Lebanese militias such as Hezbollah. It is noteworthy that there was no coordination between these parties in planting mines, and this is the major challenge we face.” 

Death by Russian-made mines 

On 30 September 2015, Russian aircraft carried out their first airstrikes in Syria, marking the beginning of Russia’s direct military intervention at the request of the former regime’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Russian military campaign has claimed the lives of 6,993 civilians, according to a SNHR report released in 2025, the Russian military campaign has claimed the lives of 6,993 civilians. Moscow’s involvement, the report argues, extended beyond shifting the military balance. It says Russia tested weapons in Syria and used civilians as a testing ground. This is an allegation reinforced, noted in the report, by statements from President Vladimir Putin, who said the experience gained in Syria supported the development of Russian weapons. 

Although the fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024 ended Russia’s direct intervention, mines supplied to the former government and mines used in mining operations continue to kill Syrians. 

During our field trips accompanied by volunteers and demining workers in the villages of al-Ankawi, al-Ziara and al-Sarmaniya in rural Hama, the village of Ako and the Kurdish Mountain areas in Latakia province, and through open-source research, the team collected dozens of photos and videos showing mines scattered across agricultural land. Some were buried in the soil and difficult to see, while others were clearly visible. Several mines that were found bore markings and symbols in Russian. Residents also showed us the remains of mines that had already exploded or had been removed by volunteers and clearance teams from the Ministry of Defence. It was not easy to identify the types of these mines and the extent of damage they could cause to civilians and the environment. The team archived these photos and videos and compared them with photos and videos from other areas in the Idlib countryside, revealing a recurring pattern in the mining, the type of mines and the extent of the damage possible. The team shared the photos and videos with a weapons expert who concluded that most of the mines identifiable were Soviet made, though they varied in size, purpose, and the type of explosion they caused. 

According to the expert, one of the mines photographed on farmland in the village of Ako, near the site where Jana Rajbou was injured, is a Soviet OZM-72 anti-personnel mine. It does not explode immediately upon activation but has a mechanical mechanism that propels it into the air to explode and disperse shrapnel over a wide area, increasing the likelihood of multiple casualties.

Other photos from the Latakia countryside show Soviet POM-2 anti-personnel mines, identifiable by their propeller shape. Plastic wires ranging from 9.5 to 10 metres in length, called ‘trip wires,’ extend from the mine. The mine is activated immediately when someone trips or steps on the wire, exploding and scattering its fragments over a wide area in a mechanism similar to the OZM-72.

Open-source footage from mine clearance operations in Jabal al-Zawiya and the forests near al-Bara and Kafr Nabl shows dozens of Soviet-made TM-62M anti-armour mines, which are usually used against tanks and military armoured vehicles. 

The presence of these mines in agricultural forests pose a tremendous danger to farmers who use harvesting machines or their vehicles on agricultural roads, as this mine explodes under pressure ranging from 150 to 550 kilograms to activate the conventional detonator. The danger of this mine is increased if it is equipped with more sensitive secondary detonators, making it susceptible to explosion under much lower levels of pressure or movement.

Video shows the dismantling of dozens of TM-62M mines in Al-Bara and Kafranbel in Idlib Governorate – Facebook

In one of the photos taken during the demining operations, Syrian teacher Fahd al-Fajr appears with eight Russian-made PMN-3 mines behind him. This anti-personnel mine is specially designed to hinder clearance operations, as it is equipped with anti-handling devices and a self-destruction mechanism that make it one of the most dangerous anti-personnel mines.

The Syrian volunteer, who was a schoolteacher and member of the Olive Branch organisation, was killed on 21 February 2025 while volunteering to clear mines in the village of Fatira in the southern rural Idlib.

An environmental disaster 

Mines in agricultural land put thousands of Syrians at direct risk of death or injury from mine explosions and also create a dilemma about how to remove them. Despite mine-clearance efforts since the fall of the Assad regime, many agricultural areas remain contaminated.  Even remote detonations or clearance using mechanical equipment can damage soil and deepen farmers’ losses. In response to questions from the investigation team about the consequences of mine explosions on agricultural land, a spokesperson for the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture explained that there are immediate and long-term effects that could last for years, and possibly decades, if not dealt with carefully. 

The ministry said immediate effects include disruption of soil structure from shock waves, loss of fertile topsoil rich in organic material, deposition of explosive residue and metal fragments, and the death of soil microorganisms essential to crop growth. Long-term impacts can include degraded soil quality, depleted organic matter, and the accumulation of toxic compounds that inhibit plant growth.

The danger is not limited to the soil, warned Dr. Ma’an Daniel Daoud, a researcher specialising in water resource management and investment. He said it can also extend to the contamination of groundwater and surface water in agricultural areas, which can lead to the poisoning of plants and animals. In an interview with SIRAJ, he added that some mines may contaminate drinking or irrigation water, as some contain substances designed to render water resources unusable. 

The Ministry of Agriculture warned that some explosive materials, such as TNT, can remain partially stable in water and soil for many years unless treated appropriately.  

In addition to the direct damage to the soil in the event of a mine explosion, mines continue to keep thousands of farmers away from their land in many areas, such as in al-Ankawi village, north of the Al-Ghab Plain in the Hama governorate. The village is littered with warning signs to not approach due to the danger of mines. Aerial drone imagery of the village shows vast areas of agricultural land that owners cannot approach because of the danger of mines. This forced displacement threatens farmers’ livelihoods and the fertility of their land, which has been left untilled and untreated for long periods. 

Using distance-area calculations in satellite applications and based on the pattern of landmines in agricultural and residential areas, the investigation team estimated that 13,700 hectares of agricultural land and civilian areas in the Idlib countryside, northern Al-Ghab Plain, and Latakia countryside are at risk from landmines. This is roughly equivalent to 19,200 football pitches. This area is equivalent to approximately 10% of the total area of the al-Ghab Plain, which covers 141,000 hectares and is considered one of the largest and most important agricultural areas in Syria. In Ako village, farmers were forced to burn dozens of trees on their land out of fear of mines, which led to many of them exploding. According to farmer Abu Adel, this was the only way to get rid of them. Speaking to SIRAJ, the farmer, who is a native of the village, expressed his sadness, saying, “These trees survived for years after we were displaced, and now we have returned to burn them today because of the mines underneath them, instead of caring for them.”

These desperate efforts by farmers are not a coincidence, but rather the result of the significant challenges surrounding the landmine issue in Syria today, despite the considerable voluntary efforts of many individuals and local and international organisations. 

Victims without support 

Since being injured by a mine that blinded his right eye and impaired his mobility, farmer Muhammed Marai Mazan, his wife and their six children have been living without any source of income. At the same time, he has to cover the cost of the necessary medication he needs following his injury, which amounts to 450,000 SYP (about $40) per week, in addition to the cost of his ambulance and emergency surgery, which amounted to $3,200. 

“In this area, we rely on God and agriculture, and we have no other source of income,” he tells the SIRAJ team, pointing out that no mine action agency has visited him since his injury. He has withdrawn from the outside world and barely leaves his home since his injury, wearing gloves, glasses and a scarf to cover the disfigurement caused by the injury. 

In the village of Ako, where 20 families have returned after displacement, the men of the village gather to drink coffee near the school, and their only topic of conversation is the mines. Farmers continue to suffer daily from the danger that hinders all aspects of their normal lives. 

Speaking to SIRAJ in front of the rubble of his house, farmer Khaled Sando explains the difficulty of living among the mines. “The car is always ready to transport the injured. I have transported four injured people from the village in my car.” He adds that the poor road conditions make reaching the nearest medical centre a difficult task that can take up to two hours. As for the school, which shows signs of recent renovation, Sando says, “They built this school for nine villages.” But “I live 200 metres away and I don’t dare send my children there because of the mines. Who would send their children to school in such conditions?”

Farmer Abu Adel says that organisations working to repair destroyed villages and houses have refused to work in their village because of the mines. “Since we returned, one person has been killed and seven injured by mines, and who knows how many more will be killed and injured in the future.” 

He adds that the Ministry of Defence’s engineering teams respond to all reports of mines and dismantle them, but they have not carried out a comprehensive survey of the village, and their equipment is old and unable to detect all the mines. 

However, outdated equipment is not the only obstacle to demining in Syria. The process is complex and requires years of work and huge funding, according to the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture, which confirmed to SIRAJ that the cost of removing mines from agricultural land ranges from $3,000 to $10,000 per hectare. 

Based on these figures, the cost of clearing the agricultural areas in the area covered by our investigation ranges from $41 million to $137 million.

Furthermore, the reclamation of land damaged by mines requires stages of removal and environmental treatment of the soil, followed by agricultural rehabilitation. The ministry emphasises that farmers are unable to do this without support. 

If the land is not rehabilitated, the effects of some explosive and toxic materials, especially in poor soil, may persist for periods ranging from 20 to 40 years. 

Maysara al-Hassan, commander of the engineering regiment in the 80th Division of the Ministry of Defence, said that the Syrian government has received promises of support from international organisations and the United Nations to expand mine clearance operations. Currently, these promises have not yet been fulfilled. 

Amidst local and international promises, residents of contaminated areas continue to live in daily fear and despair due to the lack of support for their cause. Farmer Khaled Sandou recalls with sadness the names of some of those he rescued who were not lucky enough to survive. 

He says: ‘What are they waiting for? Do they want us to remove all these mines with our own bodies? Almost every week, someone is injured by a mine. At this rate, we will either all be killed or we will detonate all the mines.’

• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad. 

• This investigation was produced with support from the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR). 

The post The Ongoing death: How Russian-made mines are killing Syrians and destroying their forgotten lands appeared first on SIRAJ.

The attack resulted in the death of American journalist Marie Colvin and French photojournalist Rémi Ochlik, and it injured French journalist Édith Bouvier and British photographer Paul Conroy. Several Syrian journalists and media workers, including Syrian translator Wael al-Omar, activists Bassel Fouad, Abbad al-Soufi, and others, also sustained injuries. 

Marie Colvin, the war correspondent born in January 1956 in New York City, worked for many years with the British newspaper The Sunday Times and reported from some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. She was widely recognized for her exceptional courage and her ability to penetrate front lines that others could not.

New evidence published for the first time in this investigation strongly supports years-long claims that the Syrian regime deliberately targeted the media center after identifying the journalists who were inside.

The evidence not only shows that Syrian regime officers had prior knowledge of the journalists’ presence inside the center at the time it was attacked, but also refutes claims made by former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an interview with the American NBC News TV that his forces had no knowledge or intention to kill Colvin.

Before the strike, the regime created detailed intelligence plans to ensure the attack’s success in killing everyone inside the center, including both Syrian and foreign journalists.

The findings further confirm that the artillery shelling of the media center in the Baba Amr neighborhood constitutes a war crime, based on the documented preparatory actions carried out by Assad’s officers in the area. Based on numerous credible witness accounts and expert analysis, the investigation also identifies with a high degree of certainty the type of artillery shell used, its launch location, and its trajectory.

This investigation establishes a clear chain of responsibility for the strike, involving multiple officers within the Assad regime ranks who approved the attack before it was executed with high precision. It traces the chain of command all the way to the top of the administrative and military hierarchy within the regime’s army.

The evidence also includes information and testimonies indicating the existence of surveillance and monitoring mechanisms targeting the media center, as well as monitoring the conditions surrounding the evacuation of the injured journalist Édith Bouvier from the besieged area, after she refused to leave through humanitarian corridors controlled by the Syrian regime.

These materials were compiled as part of a lawsuit led by the Syrian Free Lawyers Association and a group of French lawyers before the War Crimes Court in Paris. The investigation team reviewed the documents and files that contributed to this investigation. 

The conclusions establishes that the attack on the media center in Baba Amr “was not random, but rather premeditated and carried out with the aim of eliminating the presence of journalists in Homs to prevent coverage of the Syrian regime’s deadly attacks, and to instill fear among journalists to deter them from entering Syria to cover the conflict from opposition-held areas,” according to a statement sent to the investigation team from the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), a Paris-based human rights organization closely following the case.

Tracking Before the Strike

In 2001, Colvin lost her left eye while covering the civil war in Sri Lanka after being hit by shrapnel from a shell. The injury did not end her career; instead, the black eye patch she wore became a symbol of her determination to continue reporting.

At the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011, Colvin set her sights on Syria. Although the Syrian authorities denied her an official entry permit, Colvin, who had never known retreat, was determined to reach the country and expose what was happening on the ground, regardless of the cost. She arranged to cross the border from Lebanon, heading to Homs—one of the first cities to come under heavy bombardment and a central hub of protests against the regime.

Colvin arrived in the besieged neighborhood of Baba Amr and took shelter with other journalists and activists in a building that had been turned into a makeshift media center. There, she spent days closely witnessing the suffering of civilians: hunger, cold, and the constant fear of shelling that never ceased. These scenes, which she documented in her final reports, became the testimony that placed her at the heart of danger—later turning into the final chapter of both her professional and personal life.

On February 21, 2012, one day before the media center was shelled, Colvin and her colleagues visited civilian areas that had been bombarded by the regime, resulting in the deaths of many civilians, including women and children.

In the midst of the shock she experienced upon seeing a dying child, Colvin went live on TV from inside the Baba Amr media center. She described civilian casualties, the terror engulfing the neighborhood’s residents, and the catastrophic conditions in local hospitals. 

Marie bravely broadcast live using satellite technology in an environment overwhelmed by the regime’s spying drones, telecommunications jamming, and networks of informants, but the regime was able to locate the signal. She did not realize that this broadcast would be her last.

On this night, French journalist Édith Bouvier arrived in Baba Amr, unaware that the next morning, the media center would be targeted and she would be inches from death while witnessing the deaths of Colvin and Ochlik.

Yasser Shalti, a specialist investigator in war crimes and crimes against humanity, led the investigation and evidence-gathering in the case concerning the targeting of the media center in the Baba Amr neighborhood. The lawsuit was filed against the Syrian regime before the War Crimes Court in Paris, leading to the issuance of arrest warrants.

On September 1, 2025, the French judiciary issued an indictment ordering the issuance of seven arrest warrants against senior Syrian officials over the 2012 shelling of the Baba Amr media center. The warrants include former president Bashar al-Assad and several high-ranking officers, accusing them of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the February 22 attack.

Shalti stated: “We proved that the targeting of the center was deliberate through three key elements. First, documents we obtained for corroborative purposes indicate that the Syrian regime was aware of the entry of non-Syrian individuals from Lebanon. Security branches were notified of the entry of non-Syrian figures through official cables, meaning the regime was aware of the journalists’ entry at the moment they crossed the border from Lebanon.”

A witness in the case, using the pseudonym “Ulysses”, who worked in the Military Intelligence branch, confirmed that Major General Ali Mamlouk was informed in December 2011 by Lebanese sources on the arrival of the journalists in Syria. Mamlouk, then head of the General Intelligence Directorate, informed all his counterparts in security branches to locate and arrest the journalists. 

The second element, according to Shalti, was that once journalists began publishing from the area, their geographical locations became identifiable to the regime. 

A defected Syrian officer stated: “The intelligence branch 225 was responsible for monitoring communications, using technical equipment to locate communications made through non-Syrian SIM cards or satellite internet, using devices known as ‘al-Rashedat’,” globally referred to as IMSI catchers.

The third element, Shalti added, involved reconnaissance aircraft and local informants. In this context, he explained that investigators identified several informants through consistent testimonies from defected officers and witnesses in Baba Amr. 

In an interview with the RSF and SIRAJ joint-investigation team, French journalist Édith Bouvier said: “The drones were really awful. We were listening to the sound of it all day, so we knew that they were continuing to track us, to try and find us.”

According to Ulysses, on the night before the attack, February 21, 2012, a female informant was brought to the Homs military academy to meet with more than 10 senior intelligence and army officers. In this meeting, she confirmed the exact location of the media center, and the entire operation was prepared.  

Shalti concluded: “When these elements are combined, it becomes clear that the Syrian regime had full knowledge of the journalists’ location, their presence, and their movements within the neighborhood.”

The Soviet 130-millimeter artillery gun

On the day of the attack, February 22, 2012, a soldier within the Syrian army uploaded a video on YouTube showing a shelling that targeted the Baba Amr neighborhood. The footage displays several artillery guns that experts and defected officers confirmed to be Soviet-made M46 field guns, known among Syrian army officers as the “130 gun,” a reference to the 130-millimeter caliber of the shells it fires.

In the background of the video, the gate and a building for Regiment 64 of the Syrian regime’s army are clearly visible—the same unit that launched the shelling targeting the media center.

By comparing the visual evidence in the video with satellite imagery, and showing both to defected members of Regiment 64, the investigators confirmed that the building visible in the footage is indeed the regiment’s headquarters.

Video published by a Syrian army member showing shelling launched from Regiment 64 on February 22, 2012 -YouTube.

The video also shows the presence of at least six M46 artillery guns, which matches satellite imagery of Regiment 64 from May 2012, that reveal six guns of the same model positioned in firing mode toward the north, in the direction of the Baba Amr neighborhood.

Other videos of the shelling of Baba Amr, reviewed by weapons experts and former military officers, confirmed that the weapon used is a M46 130-millimeter field gun. Based on this, they confirmed that the shelling originated from a single source and, by comparing the sound of launch with the sound of impact, determined that the 130-millimeter shell takes 10.95 seconds to reach the target. Based on the specifications of this gun, the shells were fired from a distance of about 12 kilometres. 

The investigators conducted a geospatial analysis using satellite imagery, outlining a semi-circular search area for artillery positions with similar characteristics within a 12-kilometer radius south of the Baba Amr media center. The only location that matched these criteria, at a distance of 12.6 kilometers, was Regiment 64.

A chain of complicity 

The media center was surrounded by high-rise buildings, including the dormitory and Al-Baath University buildings, as well as residential towers in the Al-Insha’at neighborhood, which were used by regime forces to monitor the area. The media center was also located south of the front line separating regime forces from the Free Syrian Army and other opposition factions, making it subject to prolonged surveillance by regime forces.

At the top of the chain of responsibility for the strike was former regime leader Bashar al-Assad, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Armed Forces.

Next in the chain was Major General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, serving then as the Commander of the Security and Military Committee in Homs. This committee held exclusive authority to issue orders for military attacks and security operations. All military operational orders were issued by Ayyoub, in coordination with his deputy, Rafiq Shahada, who shared responsibility for military decision-making.

After the decision was made, orders to target the media center were sent to Colonel Shaaban Al-Ouja, Commander of Artillery Operations in Homs and head of the Rocket Battalion, to carry out the attack. Al-Ouja then relayed the order to Colonel Akram Al-Melhem, Chief of Staff of Regiment 64 and head of its Operations Branch, to determine the artillery bearing and firing parameters.

The orders were subsequently sent to the commanders of the three observation posts surrounding the media center to identify precise coordinates: Colonel Bilal Hassan, Colonel Issa Al-Ali, and Colonel Kamal Al-Mohammad. The coordinates were then relayed back to Shaaban Al-Ouja.

Violating International Law 

In an interview with the SIRAJ team regarding the legal status of the “media center” as a protected object, Yara Badr the head of the Media and Freedoms Program at SCM, stated: “Media centers, including the headquarters of television channels, newspapers, and news agencies, are considered civilian objects and may not be targeted unless they are directly and effectively used to support military operations (such as broadcasting military orders or providing direct intelligence).”

Fadi Al-Abdallah, official spokesperson for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, said: “The protection of journalists falls under the protection of civilians according to international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Journalists are covered by the protection granted to civilians during armed conflicts,” adding, “While there is no specific provision dedicated exclusively to journalists in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, they remain fully protected as civilians.”

The Day of the Attack 

Colonel Shaaban Al-Ouja assigned the artillery battery command—represented by Colonel Hussein Issa, Commander of Battalion 465—to prepare the strike. He supervised the positioning of artillery guns toward the designated target before opening fire.

The Baba Amr media center was struck by two artillery shells. The first was a hollow (penetrating) shell, intended to breach the building, verify the accuracy of the coordinates and firing angle, and create panic among those inside, forcing them out of their protective positions. After military observers confirmed that the hollow shell had hit the target and exposed those sheltering inside, a second high-explosive shell was fired at the media center.

In an interview with SIRAJ and RSF, journalist Bouvier confirmed that the center was hit twice that morning, between 7 and 8 AM, describing the horror of the final moments of Colvin and Ochlik: 

“I was inside the building when they fired the second shot. I think [Colvin and Ochlik] heard the sound of the last shell, and they were killed on their way back to the building, right at the entrance,” she said. 

In a video published by a Syrian activist from inside the media center at the moment it was struck by the first hollow shell on 22 February 2012, the flash caused by the first hollow artillery shell can be seen reflected on the glass of a building opposite the media center. This clearly indicates that the artillery strike originated from the south.

Video from inside the media center at the moment it was hit by the first artillery shell, 22 February 2012.

The investigators geolocated the video and confirmed it was taken from inside the Baba Amr media center.

Between the Artillery Battery and the Observation Post

After the first strike, the journalists decided to exit the media center in pairs toward the opposite street.

The first group consisted of a Syrian journalist and a Spanish photographer, who safely crossed to the building across the media center.

The second group was supposed to include Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik. However, after the first group crossed, the observation posts noticed that journalists had begun leaving the building and ordered the firing of the second high-explosive shell.

According to testimonies from defected officers, one of the observation posts confirmed that the journalists had been killed and that the shell had hit its target.

Captain Rabee’ Hamza, who was stationed at one of the security checkpoints forming the siege around Baba Amr, told investigators: “At the time of the strike, it was around eight o’clock in the morning. I was sitting with another officer and heard a conversation over the radio between the observation post and the artillery battery.”

The observation post said, “These are the coordinates of the media center. Observe the shot.” And after the first shell, it followed: “The shot is on target.”

There was a pause between the hollow shot and the explosive one. During that interval, Colvin and Ochlik had exited the media center and were about to reach the entrance of the opposite building when the shell struck them, killing them instantly.

The same shell also injured journalist Bouvier and British photographer Paul Conroy, who were near the entrance of the media center, preparing to leave as part of the third group. Syrian translator Wael Al-Omar was also seriously wounded as a result of the strike.

“I was still processing what to do, and I wanted to be useful. I was injured, and I didn’t even know how severe my injury was,” Bouvier said.

According to a testimony of a defected officer, regime forces celebrated after the fatal strike. Ali Abdullah Ayyoub was quoted as saying: “We got rid of those whores.” At the time, the belief was that everyone inside the media center had been killed. However, after appeals emerged from Baba Amr calling for the rescue of Bouvier and Conroy, the regime realized that some individuals had survived.

From Condemnation to “War Crime”

Since 2017, the Syrian Free Lawyers Association has worked to collect evidence related to the crime in Baba Amr, ultimately securing arrest warrants—the first since the targeting of the media center in February 2012.

The association collected and examined a large body of evidence, enabling the competent French judiciary to issue seven arrest warrants against Bashar al-Assad and several high-ranking regime officers, establishing a judicial precedent of particular significance within the framework of universal jurisdiction.

The evidence submitted relied on multiple elements, including testimonies from defected officers and information related to field-level security arrangements. These included measures reportedly taken against security personnel suspected of assisting the injured journalist Édith Bouvier in leaving the besieged area. The evidence also included subsequent detention cases, among them the arrest of Captain Rabee’ Hamza, one of the commanders of the checkpoints forming the security cordon around Baba Amr, who was held for several years in Saydnaya Prison, along with other colleagues of his who died in detention.

These materials were further supported by testimonies from legal experts, witnesses, and survivors, helping to build a comprehensive case file that characterizes the events as a war crime and a crime against humanity, within a framework that meets the requirements of international criminal justice.

The War Crimes Court in Paris issued the arrest warrants under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows national courts to prosecute crimes even when they were committed outside the country’s territory.

This ruling is considered unprecedented, as previous judicial efforts had failed to establish the intent required to classify the attack as a war crime.

On February 1, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a default judgment in a lawsuit filed by relatives of Marie Colvin, awarding $302,511,836 in damages against the Syrian Arab Republic. The court held the Syrian government responsible for Colvin’s death.

However, that ruling was purely civil, classifying the crime as an extrajudicial killing and failing to pursue criminal accountability for senior Syrian regime officials, including Bashar al-Assad.

Samer Al-Dayyi, Director of the Syrian Free Lawyers Association, explained: “The American lawsuit was a civil case that ended with financial compensation. By default, this path does not result in criminal accountability, does not aim to determine individual responsibility or dismantle the chain of command, and does not legally allow for the issuance of arrest warrants.”

Al-Dayyi emphasized that the current proceedings before the French court represent a fundamentally different process. “We are dealing with a criminal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity, based on evidence that established deliberate intent and premeditation, and linked the targeting to a broader, systematic attack on a known media center housing foreign civilian journalists.”

Since the early days of the Syrian uprising, Al-Dayyi has worked within a legal team documenting human rights violations and coordinating with field journalists to facilitate access for foreign reporters to areas outside regime control.

According to the SCM, “the path is now far more open for pursuing criminal proceedings in the United States as well… The primary move may be the surrender of Bashar al-Assad and the arrest of the other accused for trial in France or Syria.”

Al-Dayyi added: “The case was initiated at the request of the victims’ families and journalist Édith Bouvier in her capacity as a civil party, and the facts were legally characterized as a war crime.”

From a legal standpoint, proving intentional targeting of civilian journalists during an armed conflict meets the criteria of a war crime. When it is further established that such acts form part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population, with knowledge of the broader context, the legal classification extends to a crime against humanity.

When the association began work on this case, the facts and information were fragmented and lacked a unified legal framework. The legal team restructured the file, built a coherent chain of criminal responsibility, and strengthened the element of prior knowledge.

The Syrian Free Lawyers Association’s role went beyond documentation or legal advocacy; it was officially recognized as a civil party in the case by the French judiciary, which specializes in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Crown Witness

After the strike, the Syrian regime dispatched two ambulances through the Syrian Red Crescent to facilitate the transfer of Édith Bouvier and Paul Conroy to Lebanon. However, both journalists decided not to leave with the ambulances after a Red Crescent worker warned them they might be arrested on the way, or even worse. An emergency surgical procedure was performed on Bouvier at the site, as she confirmed to the investigators.

Later, an attempt was made to evacuate them through one of the tunnels leading out of the Baba Amr neighborhood. However, Bouvier’s evacuation failed because she was being transported on a medical stretcher inside the tunnel, part of which had collapsed due to shelling. Paul Conroy managed to exit successfully.

In December 2011, several months before the targeting of the media center, the Syrian regime began encircling and besieging Baba Amr through what were then known as the “security cordon forces.” These forces were a mix of regular military units not specifically trained for urban assault.

The cordon consisted of dozens of military checkpoints surrounding the neighborhood. Among them was a checkpoint near the village of Al-Naqeera, commanded by Captain Rabee’ Hamza of Regiment 64, along with 13 soldiers armed with light weapons, tasked with controlling access to and from the area.

When efforts to evacuate journalist Bouvier through the tunnels failed, the last resort was to evacuate her through the checkpoint commanded by Captain Hamza.

Hamza did not want to be exposed publicly and agreed to help on the condition that the journalist would not know his name. He coordinated the operation with a local notable.

On the morning of February 26, 2012, Bouvier was ready to leave Baba Amr, and the vehicle transporting her passed the checkpoint Hamza was overseeing at 9:00 A.M.

Hamza recalled: “I saw some of the people I had been coordinating with inside the car, and Édith Bouvier was in the back seat. She was made to wear a headscarf, and her cast was removed so she would appear like an ordinary Syrian woman. They passed beneath the railway line, from where she was transferred to the border town of Al-Qusayr, and then on to Lebanon, under a strict media blackout.”

After Bouvier reached France and news spread that she had escaped from Baba Amr, the regime launched internal investigations to determine how she had been evacuated. One informant was sent to Captain Rabee’ Hamza, posing as a Baba Amr resident and requesting assistance. Hamza did not suspect he was an informant. Over time, as communication continued and trust was established, the informant learned that Hamza, along with First Lieutenant Qusai al-Hussein, was responsible for smuggling Bouvier out. Hamza was then arrested, along with al-Hussein and several fellow officers.

They were all transferred to the Military Security Branch in Homs, where he was interrogated about how he had helped Bouvier escape. He was then transferred to Military Intelligence Branch 293 in the Mezzeh district of Damascus for further interrogation, where Hamza admitted that Bouvier had passed through his checkpoint—though he claimed he did not know she was a journalist.

Following his confession, Hamza and the other officers were transferred to the infamous Sednaya Military Prison. He was sentenced to death at the request of the prosecutor of the Second Field Military Court, on charges of participating in terrorist acts. The sentence was later commuted to ten years in prison following significant mediation efforts, while First Lieutenant Qusai al-Hussein died in Sednaya in December 2014. 

Hamza was later transferred in 2016 to a prison known as “Al-Ballouna” in Homs. On September 24, 2019, he was released and later moved to France, where he now resides.

Samer Al-Dayyi, Director of the Syrian Free Lawyers Association, stated: Following all those arrests and his release from prison, Hamza then became the crown witness in the case brought before the War Crimes Court in Paris.”

• This investigation was produced with support from Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
• Creative direction and visual design: Radwan Awad
• A version of this investigation was published in French and English on the Reporters Without Borders website.

The post “The Shot is on target”: New Evidence Exposes Assad Regime’s Deliberate Killing of Journalists Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik in Homs appeared first on SIRAJ.

He stood for a long time before a charred wall that had once been part of his home. He ran his hand over the stones, searching for a trace of a color he remembered, for a mark confirming that this place had once been his house. But it was not only time that had changed. Streets had been renamed, houses had new occupants, and ownership — once an unquestioned right — had become a matter of dispute.

Before his displacement, Abu Harb had carefully kept his purchase contracts and ownership documents. He bought his first house in 2010 after years of work and migration abroad, paying for it in cash. The second house was the family home he inherited from his father, and its papers remained preserved even after they were forced to flee.

Upon his return, however, he discovered that the first house had been renovated and occupied by strangers after it had been “sold” during his absence through an intermediary who later died, breaking the legal chain of ownership. As for the family home, it had burned during the years of siege, then was restored and sold multiple times using forged contracts.

“We lost the house three times,” Abu Harb says. “The first time when we left under the bombing. The second when it burned. And the third when we found it in someone else’s hands. It’s like losing memory itself… not just the walls.”

Abdulhadi’s story reveals a broader crisis faced by thousands of Syrians who returned after the regime’s fall, only to discover that the road back to their homes was obstructed not only by rubble, but by a complex web of laws, missing records, and sales and forgery schemes that exploited their forced absence during the war years.

In this investigative report, drawing on personal interviews, analysis of property ownership documents and complaints, and a review of laws and government decisions, we examine how the loss of documentation during the war has prevented thousands of Syrians from reclaiming their homes today. Many are unable to prove ownership of properties that, in many cases, were transferred to strangers during their absence, with ownership altered or homes seized because they stood vacant.

The suffering is compounded in informal housing areas in Damascus and its suburbs, where most sales, purchases, and transfers took place outside official institutions through customary contracts not registered in real estate courts, due to the absence of formal title deeds known as the “green tabou.” Similar complications arise in areas subject to urban redevelopment plans imposed under complex regulatory laws.

Through interviews with families from various areas of Damascus and its countryside, the investigation shows how proving ownership of one’s home, once among the most basic of rights, has become one of the most complex legal and humanitarian battles in Syria today, particularly in neighborhoods subjected to systematic destruction during the war.

Anwar Majni, a judge specializing in real estate and property rights, explains that the problem lies not only in lost documentation but also in the legal framework itself: “There are around 200 laws in Syria related to property issues, some of which contradict one another. This heavy legacy makes finding comprehensive solutions extremely difficult. We need a unified property law.”

Return Without Papers: The Battle for Ownership After the Fall of the Regime

As waves of return began to reach Damascus, its suburbs, and other parts of the country, it became clear that the loss of housing was not linked solely to widespread destruction, but also to many returnees’ inability to legally prove ownership of their homes.

The loss of official documents, the burning of real estate records, the absence of accurate inheritance registries, and the continued enforcement of laws enacted at the height of the war under the Assad regime have all turned the process of proving ownership into a long, costly judicial path, often with no outcome.

Legal expert Malek Al-Awda explains: “The core problem today lies in the loss of property documentation. Thousands of original documents were damaged, burned, stolen, or forged. In the absence of written evidence, the owner has no option but to turn to the courts, a slow and exhausting process.”

In November 2025, the Ministry of Justice issued a circular to heads of judicial courts across the governorates, outlining mechanisms for restoring the records of certain notary offices that had been damaged or lost. The circular stipulated that any request for restoration or re-registration would only be accepted upon submission of a certified “true copy” of the missing document. If such a copy was unavailable, the request would be rejected and the applicant referred to the courts to pursue their claim.

For many returnees, however, these conditions appeared nearly impossible to meet, particularly in areas where courts had been destroyed or their records completely burned.

How Are Properties Classified When They Become Subject to Dispute?

In cities such as Daraya, several residents interviewed by the investigative team confirmed that they no longer possess any documents proving ownership of their apartments or homes, after the records of the Sharia Court and the notary public office were burned during the siege of the city between 2013 and 2016.

With official records gone, proving ownership has shifted from an administrative procedure to an open-ended judicial dispute.

Flora Diop, Assistant Director of Legislation and Real Estate Registration at the Directorate of Real Estate Interests in Damascus, believes that Abdulhadi Abu Harb’s case is solvable as soon as a copy of the title deed is retrieved from the land registry. The forged contracts mentioned were most likely concluded outside official records and therefore carry no legal value. Based on the available information, she argues that Abu Harb may not even require court intervention, as his case appears straightforward and clear.

Homes Sold in the Shadows: Forgery and the Exploitation of Absence

The loss of property did not stem solely from burned documents or missing records; it was compounded by fraudulent sales and forgery carried out during years of forced absence. In Abdulhadi Abu Harb’s case, the house was not merely “seized”; it was also transferred through sales contracts brokered by intermediaries who later died, breaking the legal chain of proof. The family home, meanwhile, was sold multiple times using forged records.

Lawyer and legal expert Hind Al-Saleh explains that this legal vacuum opened the door to organized networks: “Networks of brokers and intermediaries spread, exploiting the absence of property owners. They re-registered homes through illegal means or transferred ownership using forged powers of attorney and substitution contracts.”

In April 2023, an investigative report by the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit, SIRAJ, in collaboration with the British newspaper The Guardian, revealed the existence of more than 20 security-linked networks specializing in property ownership forgery in several Syrian cities under the control of the now-fallen Assad regime.

The joint investigation noted that the absence of centralized judicial records means there is no comprehensive data on the scale of property theft in Syria or the seizure of homes belonging to Syrians living abroad.

A source at the Syrian Ministry of Justice told the investigative team that a specialized court will be established in 2026 to investigate forgery operations that took place under the former regime, to restore properties to their original owners. The source added that thousands of properties had their ownership falsified and were sold through illegal transactions.

Engineer Mazhar Sharbaji, a unionist and former mayor of Daraya, warns of the dangers of compounded forgery in certain areas: “In some neighborhoods, you may find someone who owns two or three shares in a property, yet sells the entire property by falsifying the number of shares. These cases make proving one’s rights later nearly impossible.”

Since the outbreak of the 2011 uprising, Bashar al-Assad’s regime issued 35 laws permitting the confiscation, expropriation, and seizure of property. These laws related to counterterrorism measures, urban planning, regulation of informal settlements, debt collection, enforcement of compulsory military service, communal agricultural lands, and property registries. They primarily affected the properties of displaced persons and alleged political opponents.

In such cases, returnees find themselves facing an unequal battle: their original documents are missing, official records are either damaged or contradictory, while the opposing party holds “formal” contracts that were processed during years of chaos.

Laws That Undermine Property Rights: Wartime Legislation as a Tool of Silent Dispossession

Syria’s property crisis did not emerge from chaos alone. It was shaped by a legislative framework crafted during the war years and used to expand the seizure of assets belonging to opponents and displaced persons, facilitating the confiscation of their properties or their sale at auctions of which the owners were often unaware.

Since early 2011, the government of the now-fallen Assad regime issued a series of laws and decrees related to property rights. These included measures authorizing the seizure of movable and immovable assets belonging to political opponents or individuals accused of supporting “terrorism”, charges widely used to criminalize opponents, activists, and entire communities.

Counterterrorism Law No. 19 of 2012 stipulates in Article 12 that, “In all crimes provided for in this law, the court shall, upon conviction, order the confiscation of movable and immovable assets, their proceeds, and items used or intended for use in committing the crime.”

For legal experts we spoke to, this provision was not merely a criminal penalty, but a gateway to broad asset seizures within a wider political context. It affected thousands of families who left the country or were internally displaced, particularly as Article 11 of the same law authorized the “competent Public Prosecutor or their delegate,” even before any final judicial ruling, to “order the freezing of movable and immovable assets of anyone who commits one of the crimes related to financing terrorist acts or any of the crimes stipulated in this law,” based solely on their assessment that “sufficient evidence exists,” under the pretext of safeguarding the rights of the state and victims.

This expansion of confiscation outside the judicial process was reinforced by Legislative Decree No. 63 of 2012, which granted judicial police authorities, during investigations into crimes against state security or those covered by Law No. 19 of July 2, 2012, the power to submit a written request to the Minister of Finance to take precautionary measures against the movable and immovable assets of the accused.

For example, lists published by the Ministry of Finance revealed 40,000 precautionary asset seizure cases affecting Syrians in 2017 and 30,000 in 2016, most of them justified by what the regime described as “involvement in terrorist activities.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, constitutes one of the foremost international frameworks protecting individual property rights, particularly under Articles 8, 17, and 25. These protections are further reinforced by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

At the national level, the Syrian Constitution protects the right to private property under Articles 15, 16, and 17. These protections are further supported by the Syrian Civil Code and Urban Planning and Development Law No. 23 of 2015.

The restitution of property for refugees and internally displaced persons is a standalone right under the Pinheiro Principles, adopted in 2005 by the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

These principles affirm the right to recover housing and property that was arbitrarily lost, or, when restitution is factually impossible, to receive compensation determined by an independent and impartial court.

In this context, Sharbaji warns that the property crisis cannot be treated as a single, homogeneous file. Each area carries its own story and distinct complexities — particularly regions that experienced large-scale displacement followed by partial returns, or shifts in controlling authorities. These conditions created an ideal environment for record forgery and the exploitation of legal loopholes.

Urban Planning Pretexts… Erasing a Neighborhood from the Map

Alongside laws targeting the properties of opponents and displaced persons, urban planning legislation played an additional role in reshaping ownership on the ground, especially in areas surrounding Damascus. There, complex redevelopment projects were imposed, and entire neighborhoods were classified as “informal zones” subject to demolition or restructuring.

Legal experts point in particular to Law No. 10 of 2018, which authorized the establishment of redevelopment zones and the conversion of property ownership into shares within a regulatory master plan, subject to a limited deadline for proving ownership. The law previously raised widespread fears of dispossessing displaced persons and refugees of their property, particularly amid a lack of trust in procedures under the former regime.

Law No. 23 of 2015 (Urban Planning and Development Law) is also significant. It regulates land preparation for construction in accordance with regulatory plans, whether through subdivision or reorganization. It stipulates that land included within a redevelopment zone becomes jointly owned by rights holders in proportion to the assessed value of their original properties.

On the ground, however, in areas such as Daraya and its surroundings, residents report a sense of injustice in compensation and alternative housing processes. Procedures move extremely slowly, while administrative conditions and requirements accumulate atop an already complex reality marked by damaged ownership records and missing official documentation.

In interviews with eight families, many emphasized that these problems did not originate in the current phase. Their roots trace back to the Assad era, when property and compensation files were managed through a bureaucratic and security-driven system that produced widespread legal chaos. Yet the continued reliance on these mechanisms, without substantive reforms to date, makes the issue appear,  in the eyes of those affected, as a present failure, even though it is in fact a heavy legacy inherited by the current government, which has not yet succeeded in dismantling it.

Al-Khaleej Neighborhood… Destruction Is Not the Only Problem

At Daraya’s entrance from the Damascus side, adjacent to Mezzeh Military Airport, the Al-Khaleej neighborhood, an informal residential area stretching toward Mezzeh, was among the areas most completely destroyed. Today, it appears as little more than a trace: homes erased, rubble cleared, the landmarks of an entire neighborhood wiped from the map.

The question of compensation remains unresolved: How will homeowners be compensated for houses destroyed during military operations? And what authority will confirm that a house once stood here if documents are lost, records damaged, and the neighborhood itself erased?

Abu Rashed, a Daraya resident who recently returned from ten years of exile in Turkey, says he recognized the location of his home by a large tree that once stood in front of it and remains to this day. Another man identified his house by the rare-colored tiles and marble he had installed when he built it. Both, like many others, returned first to confirm that the place still existed, before beginning to ask about the paperwork.

Mohammad Abu Malek, a resident of Daraya, specifically the Al-Khaleej neighborhood, was displaced with his family to Idlib in 2016, before undertaking a sea journey to Europe in search of safety, work, and education for his children. After the fall of the regime, he felt for the first time that returning might become possible.

“For years, I carried the idea of the house in my head because, for us, it holds all the memories connected to Syria,” he says. “I thought, finally, we’ll go back and start over. I returned to Daraya imagining that the hardest thing I would face was the destruction in Al-Khaleej… but I discovered that destruction is not the biggest problem.”

Abu Malek recounts his first impressions: the neighborhood had become rubble, to the point that Mezzeh Airport was now visible from Daraya because Al-Khaleej had been “leveled to the ground.” Yet the deeper shock was not the rubble itself, but what that rubble meant legally. “A house isn’t just walls… a house is a document. If you don’t have a paper, you effectively have nothing.”

Abu Malek’s house was completely demolished due to its proximity to Mezzeh Military Airport. It no longer exists, reduced to a mass of debris. Today, he possesses no document proving his ownership.

“Without an official proof-of-ownership document, I can’t do anything,” he says. “I can’t rebuild it, I can’t sell it, I can’t even submit a formal compensation request. It’s as if the house has become a trace, and I’m just someone trying to prove that I was once its owner.”

A Legal Trap

If urban redevelopment zones generate crisis by converting ownership into shares and slow compensation mechanisms, informal housing areas such as Al-Khaleej produce a different kind of crisis: ownership that is socially recognized but legally fragile.

Sharbaji explains that property ownership in Syria is not uniform. Some properties are formally registered (tabou), with existing documentation; others are recorded through notary offices and are supposed to have official real estate extracts. But a significant proportion of homes were sold through external or customary contracts that were never formally registered, making them difficult to prove before the state.

In these areas, where transactions occurred outside official institutions,  many residents do not possess the “green tabou,” nor do they have contracts registered in real estate courts. With the outbreak of war, this loophole turned into fertile ground for disputes, forgery, and the monopolization of rights.

Interrogation Before Return… Property Access Through Security Channels

During the war years, the battle to reclaim homes in Syria was not only about documents and records, but, in many cases, about navigating the security apparatus of the now-collapsed Assad regime.

In 2023, Abu Ahmad, a resident of the Tishreen neighborhood in Damascus, decided to return to live in his home despite the extensive destruction and the absence of basic services in the area. The high cost of living and the difficulty of paying rent in the capital pushed him to consider returning. But the path back to his house was not open.

Abu Ahmad learned from neighbors and the neighborhood mukhtar that he could not enter the area or even open the door to his home without first obtaining approval from Air Force Intelligence in Harasta. He underwent a security interrogation that included background checks on him and his three sons, and questions about any potential ties to the opposition or issues related to military service. After hours of questioning, he was allowed to return, in exchange for a bribe paid to security officers.

But another shock awaited him inside the house. “I found a family living in my home,” Abu Ahmad says. “They told me they had bought it from a real estate broker for a small sum.”

Abu Ahmad had purchased the three-room house, measuring around 60 square meters, in 2010 for 250,000 Syrian pounds, approximately $5,000 at the time. Today, he possesses no sale contract or official document proving his ownership. The house is located in an informal, unregulated area not subject to a formal land registry.

He is now trying to reclaim his home by proving that he is the rightful owner. But the path is complicated: the original seller died in 2013, there is no documented chain of contracts, no title deed, and no official registry to consult.

In such cases, Mazhar Sharbaji explains, courts may rely on alternative forms of evidence, such as electricity bills or water meters registered in the individual’s name, since obtaining a utility meter theoretically requires municipal inspection and confirmation of actual residence. Yet even these forms of proof do not guarantee a swift or decisive outcome.

How Do You Prove Ownership When You Have No Proof?

When written evidence — a title deed, a registered sale contract, or a prior court ruling, is absent, the judiciary becomes the only available path. Legal expert Malek Al-Awda explains that judges in such cases rely on what is known as “non-written evidence,” including interrogations, judicial investigations, witness testimony, and sworn statements.

“These procedures take a long time,” Al-Awda says, “and they do not always guarantee a quick result, which temporarily deprives the owner of the ability to use the property,  whether for housing, sale, or renovation.”

In practice, many returnees find themselves in a state of “legal limbo”: unable to reclaim the home, unable to dispose of it, and unable to obtain compensation. With prolonged litigation, claiming one’s home shifts from being an obvious right to becoming a psychological and financial burden.

What Is the ‘Green Tabou’?

The “green tabou” is considered the strongest proof of real estate ownership in Syria. It is a copy of the official property registry record and is issued only once. If lost, the owner must request a replacement for a lost document.

The deed includes the property number, its size and location, the owner’s name and share, and all encumbrances on the property, such as seizures, lawsuits, or mortgages.

However, in vast areas where land registry offices themselves were destroyed, this document, meant to serve as a guarantee, has become a missing paper that cannot easily be restored.

Inside the Palace of Justice in Damascus, where the investigative team visited notary offices and court departments, the scene was telling: long queues, worn-out files, and citizens moving from office to office in search of legal advice or a procedural thread that might restore part of what they lost.

Most of those we met were recent returnees after the regime’s fall, confronting a recurring reality: missing or damaged ownership records, homes occupied by strangers, and legal frameworks still operating under exceptional wartime logic. It is a reality that reflects a deep gap between what people expect from justice and what the inherited legal structure currently allows.

Millions Affected by Destruction

The property crisis in Syria extends far beyond individual stories; it spans the entire nation.

According to Abdallah Al-Dardari, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Syria had approximately 5.5 million homes before the war. Of these, 328,000 were completely destroyed, meaning that one in every three homes suffered either total destruction or partial damage.

As a result, around 5.7 million people today require direct housing support — either because they are homeless, living in uninhabitable dwellings, or at risk of losing their property due to missing documentation and complex ownership disputes.

Mu’tasim Al-Sioufi, a director at the organization The Day After, argues that the crisis goes beyond physical destruction to a deeply complicated legal structure: “Around 60 percent of housing in Syria consists of informal settlements. Many of these homes were connected to water and electricity in the 1980s due to corruption. Then came the war and displacement, which further complicated matters, in addition to longstanding issues such as usufruct rights and expropriations dating back to the 1960s.”

According to Al-Sioufi, what emerged after the regime’s fall is only “the tip of the iceberg,” while the real crisis runs much deeper and is far more intertwined.

A table by “Syrian Response Coordinators” showing estimates for Syria’s reconstruction costs as a result of the destruction caused by the Assad regime.

The Legacy of Systematic Looting… The Fourth Division and Beyond

In February 2025, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria issued a report titled: “Pillage and Plunder: The Unlawful Seizure and Destruction of Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons’ Property in Syria.”

Based on satellite imagery, direct testimonies, and visual documentation, the report documented systematic looting and destruction of civilian homes over a period of 13 years. It concluded that such looting — often linked to military and security formations, including the Fourth Division — represents one of the major obstacles to the return of millions of refugees and displaced persons following the regime’s fall.

According to the report, the areas most severely affected were those that changed hands between 2016 and 2020, where properties were treated as “spoils” or instruments of collective punishment.

A Home Waiting for a Paper… Return Without Guarantees

In response to this landscape, the Ministry of Justice speaks of measures to address the problem. A ministry source — who requested anonymity — stated that the Public Prosecutor’s Office and relevant judicial authorities are pursuing cases of unlawful property seizure, particularly those belonging to forcibly displaced persons, “in accordance with applicable laws and through procedures that ensure justice and transparency.”

According to the source, specialized courts and judicial departments have been designated to handle cases of forged property ownership and lost documents, with the aim of accelerating rulings and unifying judicial interpretations, while also simplifying procedures and reducing processing times.

However, legal experts and rights advocates argue that these steps, despite their importance, remain insufficient without more courageous decisions.

Al-Sioufi proposes expanding the means of proving ownership beyond traditional tools, such as incorporating broader community testimonies or establishing a technical reference body to develop clear, region-specific standards.

Malek Al-Awda stresses the need for transitional solutions, such as granting temporary ownership records valid for five or ten years to safeguard people’s rights until registry issues are resolved. “Without alternative and bold legal formulas,” he says, “thousands of families will remain locked out of their homes — even after they have returned.”

For Abdulhadi Abu Harb, Mohammad Abu Malek, Abu Ahmad, and many others, return remains incomplete. The house exists — or once existed — but the paper is missing. In its absence, memory turns into dispute, belonging into a file, and a right into a long judicial process.

In post-regime Syria, returning home is no longer a simple act. It is a legal, social, and psychological battle — one that risks reproducing displacement in a silent form, this time in the name of the law.

This investigation was produced with support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and a version of it was published on the Daraj website.

• Research and reporting: Mawaddah Kallas
• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad

The post Residential Property Claims in Syria: A Growing Challenge for Returnees appeared first on SIRAJ.

On a rainy April afternoon, Bassam sat at a Limassol cafeteria and recounted harrowing details from the three nights and three days he spent clinging to an inflatable tire in the open sea, awaiting rescue or death.

In the early hours of Friday March 14, 2025, Bassam, his brother, his cousin and a neighbor followed a smuggler across the Syrian border to Lebanon, where they boarded a small fiberglass boat with a Yamaha engine. In addition to the 21 men on board, the boat was loaded with gallons of fuel and water, and two boxes of dates. Their journey to Cyprus, some 160km westwards, could last anywhere from hours to days, depending on sea conditions and navigation skills.

The recent collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, in December 2024, had created a sudden instability for ethnic minorities like Bassam, and thousands were fleeing for fear of extremist attacks and retributions. (Most of the men on the boat were Sunni, the majority religious group in Syria.)

Eight months before the change in power, in April 2024, Cyprus authorities stopped processing asylum claims from Syrian nationals, claiming that the country’s security status needed reassessment. The island’s proximity to the Middle East had attracted the highest number of asylum applications per capita of any EU country, and the government adopted policies aimed at curtailing the influx of people. But Bassam had read on Facebook that the application process had reopened, and connected with the smuggler who published the misleading posts. He was told that the passage costs $3300, with $2000 due upfront, he told the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism Association (SIRAJ).

With good weather and calm seas, the fiberglass boat the men boarded in the pre-dawn hours should have reached Cyprus while there was still daylight, but the journey took longer than expected.

The timeline is murky, but phone records obtained by reporters show that one of the perished passengers, 21-year-old Hassan, called his father from the driver’s satellite phone at 18:16. The sun had already set and, according to Bassam, they could see the lights of the Cypriot coast.

But the waves grew bigger under the March full moon, and the small boat filled with water faster than they could empty it, Bassam recalled. When a big swell overwhelmed the struggling vessel from the rear, the men quickly found themselves in the blackness of the sea.

Bassam had a small plastic water bottle tucked into the pocket of his pants, and the inflatable tire the smugglers had distributed to each passenger. The frigid water, as low as 16 degrees, was turbulent. At first he was near five men, including his brother, but soon the waves separated them.

When the sun came up the next morning Bassam said he first looked for his brother. He saw him from a distance but couldn’t reach him. He could hear the others calling out to each other, and praying.

Bassam had been saving his small bottle of water, but as he tried to help a man next to him who slipped out of his inflatable tire, a wave took it away. Later he watched another man let go of his tire to try to swim to Cyprus, only to drown.

Bassam didn’t know how to swim, so he held on, floated, and prayed to God. He said he saw many boats – commercial and fishing boats – and called out to them, but they passed him by. At one point he saw a military helicopter, but it too passed him. Eventually, his parched throat stopped making noise. When he awoke on Monday he was completely alone.

Bassam survived an estimated 64 hours before a white helicopter appeared above him and proceeded to pull him out of the sea. An hour earlier, a Cypriot coast guard vessel had spotted the only other survivor, Raad. The rest of the men from the boat had perished.

Reporters from Cyprus and Syria have pieced together the most comprehensive account of the three days and nights, based on interviews with authorities, survivors, and NGO workers – as well as officials’ public statements, and vessel and flight-tracking data.

A rescue helicopter hoists a survivor from the sea. Credit: CNA, March 18 2025. Republished with permission.

The Confounding Search

When relatives stopped hearing from the men that night, and couldn’t reach anyone on the satellite phone, they began to panic.

Watch The Med Alarm Phone, a group of volunteers assisting refugees in distress in the Mediterranean, said a relative contacted them on Saturday, March 15, and shared the satellite phone number, and a photo someone sent from their journey. The image had geolocation metadata that allowed Alarm Phone to estimate coordinates and the time the photograph was taken. (Reporters were unable to independently verify the metadata.)

Alarm Phone sent an initial email alerting authorities of a boat in distress, and the estimated coordinates at 11:11pm Cyprus time. By then, more than 24 hours had passed since the sinking.

When Alarm Phone volunteers followed up their emails with calls to the Cyprus-based Joint Rescue Coordination Center, which oversees multi-branch emergency responses, they were told that authorities were investigating.

JRCC told reporters that they launched an immediate search and rescue operation that night, but also underscored that they considered Alarm Phone’s distress alert unconfirmed.

“Many tips end up being confirmed but not all,” JRCC’s then-Deputy Commander George Economou told CIReN (he has since been appointed commander). “There were cases where they shared information that did not correspond with reality,” he added, in reference to Alarm Phone.

“For us there is a gradation of information,” JRCC’s then-Commander Andreas Charalambides told reporters. “If a piece of information that somebody is in danger is not confirmed, there is a specific process we follow and begin to investigate until danger or no danger is confirmed”.

“The process follows the same steps we follow as if we have confirmation – it’s just that no rescue occurs. So from the search and rescue part, we begin the search until we have confirmation.”

Reporters understood that the referenced process included contacting the satellite phone service provider, scanning key areas with onshore cameras and radar, and issuing a radio alert to nearby vessels.

According to Economou, the patrol boat out at sea that night – Pentadaktylos – was ordered to the location shared by AlarmPhone in their email.

Vessel tracking data obtained by OCCRP and analyzed by reporters shows that Pentadaktylos was on its usual patrol route that night, but it did not approach Alarm Phone’s coordinates, remaining at least 30km away between midnight and 8am.

Only after Pentadaktylos docked at Ayia Napa marina, around 9am on Sunday, does data show activity in the area indicated by Alarm Phone.

Authorities told CIReN that around 9am is when they independently obtained from the satellite phone company the coordinates of the last location of the boat driver’s phone, just 20 nautical miles from Alarm Phone’s coordinates, and confirmation that the last signal was sent 30 hours earlier.

Tracking data shows the Cypriot police boat Evagoras Pallikaride patrolling in an area 20-25km north of AlarmPhone’s coordinates on Sunday.“

According to officials, search and rescue helicopters were also deployed on Sunday, and air tracking data shows a surveillance plane circling the area. Officials later stated that they searched some 2750 square nautical miles.

However, when the first survivor was located by the Coast Guard on Monday afternoon, the minister of justice publicly stated that it was “completely random and coincidental,” echoing statements by the defense minister. The JRCC also stated that Monday afternoon is when they launched a search and rescue operation that led to the rescue of the second survivor and seven bodies.

According to Economou they were found within 12 nautical miles of the NGO’s coordinates and within 14 nautical miles from the satellite phone’s last known location, 37 hours after the initiation of the search.

The  JRCC declined to explain the inconsistencies identified in this investigation, and referred reporters to a press release from March 19, 2025, which stated that there were discrepancies in the testimonies of the survivors rescued two days earlier, and that they may have been unrelated to the shipwreck flagged by Alarm Phone on Saturday night.

The vessel “Pentadaktylos” on patrol on March 15-16, 2025. Credit: Global Fishing Watch

Navigating the System

After the shipwreck, AlarmPhone issued a public statement, questioning whether Cypriot authorities acted in “a timely and adequate manner,” what concrete steps were taken, and whether the response to the incident will be investigated.

Political parties AKEL, VOLT and GREENS and NGO Cyprus Council for Peace also demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the shipwreck.

Reporters confirmed in April that a police investigation into the shipwreck is ongoing but did not recieved an update on the status by publication time. JRCC did not reply to questions about an internal investigation into its response.

The survivors, meanwhile, are in legal limbo in Cyprus.

Bassam now lives in Limassol with relatives who support him while he awaits approval of his asylum claim. Raad doesn’t have permanent housing or material support.

By mid-2025, authorities resumed processing of Syrian asylum applications, though most applicants have been rejected, the Ministry of Migration told CIReN.

“Decisions have already been issued, mostly rejecting a significant number of applications, always following an individualized assessment,” the ministry said in an email.

But the survivors told CIReN and SIRAJ that they haven’t heard anything about their cases.

Corina Drousiotou, the senior legal advisor to the UNHCR-funded asylum rights NGO

Cyprus Refugee Council, said the men were released from the hospital shortly after the rescue “without any support by the state, psychological or material,” in terms of benefits or accommodation. Drousiotou added they were initially denied access to the Social Welfare Service and the benefits asylum seekers are entitled to.

“One of the survivors belongs to a minority and has had support from the relevant community, whereas the other survivor does not have community support and is still struggling, as the benefit he receives is often delayed which leads to him being homeless,” Drousiotou confirmed to CIReN.

The Cyprus Refugee Council said they expected Asylum Services under the Ministry of Migration Policy to prioritize the cases of the two survivors due to their vulnerability, but “to date the cases are still pending.”

The Deputy Ministry of Migration and International Protection did not respond to CIReN’s request for comment on the status of the cases.

“I won’t go back,” said Bassam, who studied chemistry at a university in Syria, but is not allowed to work in Cyprus due to his status. “The situation there is terrible — nothing but killings, kidnappings, and chaos, even in our own areas.”

The post Surviving a Shipwreck, Drowning in the System appeared first on SIRAJ.

His work, described as “close to suicide,” was nevertheless in high demand. Exchanging foreign currency through official channels rarely reflected its real value on the parallel market. Most people holding foreign currencies, particularly dollars and euros, who wished to sell or even buy them turned to the parallel market to avoid suspicion, especially after several laws criminalized first the trading of dollars and later even their possession.

Despite the heavy security pressure and the regime’s attempts to criminalize dealings in foreign currency, the driver did not know that the passenger who had entered his car was an informant working with Military Intelligence Branch 251 (the Al-Khatib branch).

During the exchange, the informant took a photo of the agent inside the car and sent it to his superior in the branch via WhatsApp. A screenshot of that message later appeared in an official document signed by the head of Branch 251 and addressed to Department 40 on 29 November 2023, ordering the immediate arrest of the transfer agent, his handover to a police department, and the confiscation of the phones in his possession “with utmost urgency for the purpose of investigation.”

This currency exchange agent was not the only one arrested. The former Syrian regime deployed all available tools to track down and detain anyone dealing in foreign currencies, whether exchanging them or, later on, merely possessing them after issuing a series of laws aimed at centralizing control over hard currency in Assad’s hands.

Economic researcher Khaled al-Turkawi says that all the measures taken by the Assad regime were designed to extort anyone holding dollars or other foreign currencies, forcing them into two choices: either exchange their money through the regime at the rate it dictated, or face legal prosecution. He notes that these laws had little to do with economic policy and were instead intended to extract funds to sustain military operations and pursue victory.

As part of the “Damascus Dossier” project, the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ reviewed digital copies of numerous documents showing how the Assad regime used its intelligence agencies to track and arrest anyone dealing in U.S. dollars or other foreign currencies following Decree No. 3 of 2020, issued by the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which criminalized transactions in any currency other than the Syrian pound.

The “Damascus Dossier” is a collaborative investigative project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in partnership with the German public broadcaster NDR. It brings together journalists from around the world to uncover disturbing new details about one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century: the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

ICIJ, NDR, and 126 journalists from 24 media organizations across 20 countries spent more than eight months organizing and analyzing these documents, consulting experts, and interviewing Syrian families still searching for loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule.

The Damascus Dossier investigations reveal the inner workings of Assad’s security apparatus and its links to foreign governments and international organizations. The leak consists of more than 134,000 files, mostly written in Arabic, amounting to approximately 243 gigabytes of data.

The documents span more than three decades, from 1994 to December 2024, and originate from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence and General Intelligence Directorates.

Both agencies have been subject to extensive U.S. and European sanctions due to their brutal practices, including torture and sexual violence.

The documents include internal memoranda, reports, and correspondence revealing the day-to-day operations of Assad’s surveillance and arrest network, as well as its coordination with foreign allies such as Russia and Iran, and communications with United Nations agencies operating inside Syria.

The highly sensitive database also contains the names of numerous former Syrian intelligence officers.

Recruiting Informants to Seize the “Dollar”

In a document dated 16 December 2023, the head of the Military Intelligence Branch 251 ordered Department 40 (Al-Khatib Branch) to arrest three money transfer agents operating in different areas of Damascus on charges of dealing in foreign currencies.

The document includes detailed information about the locations where the agents worked and businesses they used as cover to provide money transfers, as well as photographs secretly taken by intelligence officers during currency exchange operations. It also contains personal details such as phone numbers and other identifying information.

As in the previous document, the branch chief attached screenshots that appear to have been sent directly by the officers responsible for surveillance and reporting during the operation.

These operations were not only aimed at enforcing decrees and laws issued by the regime’s authorities. According to economic researcher Khaled al-Turkawi, they also served a much broader economic objective: monopolizing foreign currencies in the country and redirecting them to sources close to the regime and individuals within Assad’s inner circle.

After Assad banned trading in U.S. dollars and other foreign currencies, Syrians began using coded language to refer to the dollar in personal conversations and over the phone. They used nicknames such as “the forbidden one,” “parsley,” “the green,” or “number one.”

However, this strategy did not escape the Syrian intelligence services under Assad. One intelligence document summarizing surveillance of specific phone numbers indicates that Syrian intelligence identified a man in Sweida province as dealing in U.S. dollars after he asked about the price of “number one,” a coded reference to the dollar during what appeared to be a wiretapped phone conversation.

Criminalizing the Trade and Possession of Foreign Currency

Possessing foreign currency, especially U.S. dollars, had long been considered taboo in Syria. Even carrying $100 in one’s pocket could expose a Syrian to questioning, as holding such currency was considered illegal.

As a result, working in currency exchange outside the control of the Syrian regime was widely viewed as a “suicidal profession” because of the extreme risks involved, particularly in recent years, when the regime’s need to extract additional funds intensified.

Trading in the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies was first officially banned in Syrian markets in 1986, through Law No. 24 of 1986, issued under Hafez al-Assad. The law criminalized buying or selling foreign currencies outside licensed banks and exchange companies, as well as possessing large amounts of dollars without authorization. Violators faced prison sentences and financial penalties. This law laid the foundation for the criminalization of foreign currency trading in the local market.

Law No. 24 remained in effect until 2013, when Bashar al-Assad, two years after the outbreak of the Syrian uprising, issued Law No. 29 of 2013, titled “Combating Illegal Dealings in Foreign Currencies.” The law criminalized trading foreign currencies outside official channels, including licensed banks and exchange companies.

It also criminalized buying or selling dollars or other foreign currencies on the parallel market, as well as transferring money or speculating on exchange rates. Notably, the law imposed harsher penalties, including prison sentences ranging from three to ten years, depending on the severity of the offense, in addition to substantial fines.

In 2020, the Syrian pound experienced a sharp collapse. For the first time in its history, the exchange rate reached 1,000 Syrian pounds per U.S. dollar in January 2020, and by the end of that year, the dollar had risen to approximately 3,000 Syrian pounds.

This collapse prompted Assad, on 4 October 2020, to claim that the fundamental reason for the pound’s decline was the freezing of billions of dollars in deposits belonging to Syrians in Lebanese banks following Lebanon’s banking crisis in 2019.

During a visit to the “Producers 2020” exhibition, Assad stated that between $20 billion and $42 billion of these deposits may have been lost in the Lebanese banking sector, describing the figure as “terrifying” for Syria’s economy. He added: “They took the money and placed it in Lebanon, and we paid the price.”

Yet this statement was not Assad’s only response. Earlier that same year, he had already tightened restrictions on Syrians holding foreign currencies through Decree No. 3 of 2020. For the first time, the decree explicitly used the phrase “prohibition of possessing foreign currencies.”

Article 1 of the decree states that “it is prohibited to deal in any currency other than the Syrian pound as a means of payment or for any type of commercial transaction.” The decree significantly increased penalties and introduced legal provisions allowing authorities to confiscate foreign currencies involved in such transactions.

Dominating Hard Currency

It appears that the Syrian regime’s aim behind these laws was not to regulate the flow of currency in the market, nor even to protect the Syrian pound, but rather to secure Assad’s share of every dollar entering Syria, according to economic researcher al-Turkawi.

“The purpose of all these laws was to centralize the sale of dollars through the Central Bank. The regime wanted all foreign currency transactions to take place through the Central Bank for three main objectives.”

The first objective, according to al-Turkawi, was the collapse of the Syrian pound, which had effectively become unacceptable for international trade, as foreign suppliers increasingly demanded payment exclusively in U.S. dollars. This made it difficult for the regime to finance the army or settle payments to Russia or Iran without dollars, as well as to pay for essential imports such as food supplies.

• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad

The post “‘The Green’ in Assad’s Hand”.. How the Syrian Regime Recruited Informants to Trap Those Dealing in U.S. Dollars appeared first on SIRAJ.

Accounts differ regarding the fate of senior military commanders and intelligence chiefs in Syria. Some are rumored to have fled to Russia, while other sources suggest that several are hiding in Iraq and Lebanon.

What all sources agree on, however, is the panic that swept through the regime’s hard core on the night it fell; a fear that drove one of Assad’s most senior figures, Major General Kifah Melhem, former head of Military Intelligence and Director of the National Security Bureau until the regime’s collapse (succeeding Ali Mamlouk), to abandon his office and flee, leaving behind numerous documents and papers. Among them was a particularly sensitive document: his personal phonebook.

This phonebook, one of the key documents reviewed by the investigative team at the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ, as part of the international investigative project “Damascus Dossier,” contains approximately 400 names.

The phonebook does not specify the nature of Melhem’s relationship with those whose numbers appear in his personal contacts. In this report, however, we attempt—solely through examining the phonebook and its contents—to understand the extent of Melhem’s power and centrality within the former Syrian regime, as reflected in the web of relationships recorded in his contact list.

“Damascus Dossier” is a collaborative investigative journalism project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in partnership with Germany’s public broadcaster NDR, bringing together journalists from around the world to uncover new and horrifying details about one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century: the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

ICIJ, NDR, and SIRAJ, together with 126 journalists from 26 partner media outlets across 20 countries, spent more than eight months organizing and analyzing the documents, consulting experts, and conducting interviews with Syrian families who are still searching for loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule.

The “Damascus Dossier” project exposes the internal structure of Assad’s security apparatus and its connections with foreign governments and international organizations. The leak consists of more than 134,000 files, mostly written in Arabic, equivalent to approximately 243 gigabytes of data.

These documents span more than three decades, from 1994 to December 2024, and originate from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence and the General Intelligence Directorate.

Both intelligence agencies have been subjected to extensive U.S. and European sanctions due to their brutal practices, including torture and sexual violence.

The materials include internal memoranda, reports, and correspondence that reveal the daily operational mechanisms of Assad’s surveillance and detention system, as well as its coordination with foreign allies such as Russia and Iran, and its communications with UN-affiliated agencies operating inside Syria.

The highly sensitive database also contains the names of numerous former Syrian intelligence officers and operatives.

…

According to an investigation published by The New York Times on 15 October 2025, Kifah Melhem is currently residing in Russia alongside several former senior military and intelligence officers. It goes without saying that Melhem’s relationships extend both vertically and horizontally across the sprawling arms of the Syrian regime. Yet the personal phonebook he left behind offered the SIRAJ team—who examined its yellowed pages—a rare opportunity to glimpse the hidden communications of one of the Syrian regime’s most senior war criminals.

Who Is Major General Kifah Melhem?

Major General Kifah Melhem hails from the village of Jneinet Raslan in the countryside of Tartous Governorate, where he was born in 1961. He began his military career in the Republican Guard before being transferred to the Military Intelligence in 1994. He steadily rose through the ranks until, on the eve of the Syrian uprising, he became head of the notorious Investigation Branch 248 in Kafr Sousa, Damascus, which falls under the command of Military Intelligence.

In 2012, as protests intensified during the Syrian revolution, Bashar al-Assad appointed Melhem head of the Military Intelligence branch in Aleppo, and later in Latakia, where he gained notoriety for his role in suppressing protests and torturing detainees, according to human rights reports, including those issued by Human Rights Watch. Other reports indicate that he worked alongside Hilal al-Assad—who was killed in 2014—to recruit and arm shabiha militias to suppress demonstrations in both governorates.

This absolute loyalty to the regime, combined with a long record of human rights violations, led to Melhem’s appointment as head of the Information Branch (Branch 294). He was later appointed by Bashar al-Assad as Director of Military Intelligence, a position he held from 2019 until early 2024. During this period, Melhem’s responsibilities expanded to overseeing torture, killings, and extrajudicial executions. He exercised significant oversight over the widespread crimes committed at Saydnaya Prison, prompting the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to impose sanctions on him in 2020 for his role in war crimes and human rights abuses in Syria.

In early 2024, as part of what the Jusoor Center for Studies described as a “restructuring of the security apparatus,” Bashar al-Assad appointed Kifah Melhem Director of the National Security Bureau, following the dismissal of Major General Ali Mamlouk.

Assad also issued a secret directive linking all security branches directly to the National Security Bureau—a move interpreted by analysts as an attempt to curtail the power of security branch chiefs after Assad’s control over them had weakened in favor of Russian and Iranian influence. This was achieved by appointing younger, more loyal figures, foremost among them Kifah Melhem.

Syrian researcher and writer Hussam Jazmati noted that Melhem’s appointment was “the cumulative result of repeatedly proving his loyalty and devotion to the regime and to assigned tasks.” Jazmati linked the decision to a period of regime “confidence and relief” in early 2024, coinciding with renewed Arab and international engagement with Bashar al-Assad. This environment, Jazmati argued, led Assad to believe he no longer needed a strong and influential National Security chief, but rather a disciplined figure resembling a ‘secretary’ more than a power broker.

A Pyramid of Phones and Ranks

Naturally, Melhem relied heavily on military and security personnel for coordination and communication. Yet his connections to economic elites, business figures, civil authorities, and opposition figures remain more opaque—particularly given the reputation of officials like Melhem, who were known for extortion and intimidation to keep individuals aligned with the Assad regime’s interests.

It is unclear when exactly Melhem began recording phone numbers in his personal phonebook, or when he stopped before fleeing. Between the entries and the ranks preceding many numbers, the book includes figures who have since died, others who were promoted and later fled with the regime’s collapse—like Melhem himself—or who remain out of public view.

Examining Melhem’s personal phonebook is, in effect, an attempt to map the hierarchical structure of Syria’s intelligence apparatus—its agency heads, branch chiefs, regional commands, and functional specializations.

Melhem followed a highly consistent system in recording contacts: he would list the rank first, followed by the name, and then the security branch or military formation to which the individual belonged, whether it was part of the Syrian regime forces or of other “friendly forces,” as the regime used to describe its Russian and Iranian allies.

The system used in Melhem’s phonebook is precise, classified, and strictly rank-based, granting its owner, then Director of the National Security Bureau, rapid access to the personal and office numbers of Syria’s most senior security officials.

Jazmati attributes this meticulous organization to Melhem’s background in engineering and his earlier close working relationship with Bassel al-Assad, his former classmate at Lycée Laïque and the Faculty of Engineering. Melhem reportedly served as Bassel’s liaison to the Prime Ministry and senior state officials, making fast access to people, phone numbers, and addresses an operational necessity.

Senior Figures in the Phonebook

Melhem’s phonebook is filled with top-ranking figures from Assad’s intelligence services, foremost among them Military Intelligence, which Melhem himself headed before his appointment to the National Security Bureau.

Among the names is Brigadier General Kamal Hassan, who was later promoted to Major General and succeeded Melhem as head of Military Intelligence after Melhem’s promotion, before fleeing to Russia during Assad’s escape.

Today, Major General Hassan is considered one of the key figures behind armed defiance against Syria’s transitional government. Reports, including a Reuters investigation published on 6 December, indicate that Hassan—as well as Assad-linked businessman Rami Makhlouf—has been spending millions of dollars to fund thousands of fighters along the Syrian coast in an attempt to ignite a military rebellion.

The phonebook also includes the names of eight Major Generals from the army and intelligence services, including:

• Mohammad Rahmoun, former head of Air Force Intelligence in the southern region
• Wajih Abdullah, former director of the Military Office at the Presidential Palace
• Adib Salameh, deputy director of Air Force Intelligence
• Badi’ Maalla, commander of the Unified Coastal Command in Baniyas, which was responsible for overseeing aerial operations along the coast

Maalla is known for originating the use of “naval mines” to bombard civilians in Syria and was also responsible for Hmeimim Airbase, home to Russia’s largest military base in the country.

Other figures include:

• Hassan Al-Kurdi, former head of the Military Vehicles Administration
• Mufeed Khaddour, former head of Military Intelligence Branch 291
• Adnan Ismail, commander of the Third Division of the Syrian Army
• Jamal Younes, later promoted to Major General and head of the Security and Military Committee in the eastern region

In one departure from his usual detailed entries, Melhem recorded a number labeled only as “Major General, Director of the Political Administration,” without a name. This likely refers either to Abdul Karim Suleiman, who held the post from 2004 to 2018, or to his successor Hassan Hassan.

Colonels, Brigadiers, and Branch Chiefs

Below the rank of Major General, Melhem’s phonebook lists numerous Brigadiers and Colonels across various military and security formations. Among them:

• Brigadier Tawfiq Haidar, Director of the National Security Office, which replaced the National Security Bureau under Ali Mamlouk in 2012, following the bombing of the National Security Office in Damascus
• Brigadier Ghassan Ismail, Deputy Director of Air Force Intelligence
• Brigadier Shafiq Sarem, an officer in the Syrian Army
• Brigadier Taha Haj Taha, former head of the Political Security branch in Latakia
• Brigadier Imad Mohammad, affiliated with the Air Force and Air Force Intelligence, who died in 2019

Notably, the phonebook includes many branch chiefs of Military Intelligence and Military Police across Syria, all of whom served under Melhem during his tenure as Director of Military Intelligence until early 2024. Among them:

• Brigadier Samir Nizam, head of the Military Police branch in Damascus
• Brigadier Tamer Al-Dakhil, head of the Military Intelligence branch in Aleppo
• Brigadier Wafiq Nasser, head of Branch 256 (Military Intelligence)
• Colonel Osama (surname not listed), head of Branch 217 of Military Intelligence in Suwayda

Once again deviating from his usual clarity, Melhem recorded several numbers without names, including:

• Head of Branch 248
• Head of Branch 235, known as Palestine Branch (likely Mohammad Khalouf or Yassin Dahhi)
• Head of Branch 237, known as the Wireless Communications Branch

All of these branches fall under the authority of Military Intelligence.

The Less Fortunate Ranks

While Major General Kifah Melhem and many senior figures of the former regime, including Bashar al-Assad himself, are reportedly enjoying a comfortable life in Moscow today, and while many of the names listed in Melhem’s phonebook have gone into hiding out of fear of accountability, some of the individuals recorded in his contacts were far less fortunate.

For these figures, their names now amount to little more than ranks on paper, having failed to escape as Melhem and his peers did.

On page five of Melhem’s phonebook appears the name of Brigadier Ali Al-Saleh, who was unable to flee like Melhem and others and ultimately fell into the hands of the security forces of Syria’s new transitional government, according to a January 2025 report by Al Arabiya TV Channel.

In April, Syria’s transitional government security forces also announced the arrest of Brigadier Hamed Barhoum, whose name likewise appears in Melhem’s phonebook.

Syrian security forces published photos of Barhoum following his arrest. He was detained along with other members of the fallen regime and was found in possession of a Kalashnikov rifle.

Meanwhile, Brigadier Habib Safiya, who served as head of the Military Police in Aleppo, was killed in a car accident on the Damascus highway in 2019, amid speculation that the incident was a staged assassination linked to internal power struggles within the regime’s security apparatus.

Friends of Many Nationalities

Since the beginning of foreign intervention in its favor to counter the Syrian revolution’s growing momentum, the Assad regime frequently used the term “friends” to refer to its military allies, particularly during the Russian intervention, which shifted the balance of the war in the regime’s favor before its eventual collapse.

These “friends” were at times Russian, at other times Iranian, and later included countries such as China, as well as entities like Abkhazia. Among the regime’s most fervent loyalists, they were even referred to as “brothers.”

Russian and Iranian “friends” feature prominently in Kifah Melhem’s phonebook. Scattered throughout its pages are the names of Russian and Iranian translators, as well as military officers such as “Major Yuri,” who appears elsewhere as “Colonel Yuri,” and a Russian lieutenant colonel named Edgar. Melhem also recorded the number of a Russian Major General named “Bilal,” who appears to have been operating in Qamishli.

The presence of Iranian “friends” or “brothers” is even more striking. The phonebook includes the number of Hajj Amer Al-Haidari, described by Melhem as the “Commander of the Zayn al-Abidin Brigade,” a militia formed in Deir Ezzor with support from Iran and Hezbollah. It also lists Mohammad Al-Saeed, commander of the Jerusalem Brigade (Liwa al-Quds), a Palestinian-Syrian militia founded in Aleppo in 2013, which multiple sources say received financial and logistical support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Beyond militia commanders of varying allegiances, the phonebook also contains the name and number of Major General Jamil Al-Sayyed, widely described as “the (former) Syrian regime’s man in Lebanon,” where he served as Director of General Security. He was previously arrested in connection with the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, before being released years later.

Melhem also mentions his Syrian friends and fellow citizens. For example, Raji Falhout’s name is included. Falhout founded the “Dawn Militia” in Suwaida, which was supported by the Military Intelligence branch that Melhem led for many years. Falhout’s fate remains unknown after battles with other military formations in the province in July 2022, which resulted in the elimination of his militia and the loss of contact with him.

The Octopus General

The hundreds of names and phone numbers handwritten by Major General Melhem reveal the breadth of his influence and power—not only within Syria’s military and intelligence circles, but extending across civilian institutions, the medical and media sectors, financial elites, and even figures described as part of the “opposition.”

At the top of Melhem’s contact list appear the names of Syria’s most powerful economic figures under the Assad regime. These include Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and owner of the country’s largest financial empire—later curtailed after he was sidelined in favor of Asma al-Assad; Abu Salim Daaboul, former head of the Presidential Office under both Hafez and Bashar al-Assad and one of Syria’s wealthiest businessmen; and Hussam Qaterji, one of the regime’s most prominent economic fixers, who is subject to international sanctions for his illicit business activities.

Non-military government institutions are also represented in Melhem’s phonebook. It includes numbers for several ministries and ministers, most notably Mansour Azzam, Minister of Presidential Affairs, who press reports say was aboard the private aircraft that transported Bashar al-Assad to Moscow. The phonebook also contains a number labeled simply “Prime Minister,” without a name, corresponding to an internal contact line.

For a figure of Melhem’s rank, the identity of the prime minister appears less important than the office itself. The same pattern applies to the entry for the Grand Mufti of the Republic, recorded without a name. However, the last person to hold that post before it was abolished in 2021 was Sheikh Badr al-Din Hassoun, who was arrested following the fall of the Assad regime and later appeared in a video released by the Syrian Ministry of Justice before a prosecutor.

Melhem’s reach extended even to figures long described as part of the “internal opposition,” or what the regime preferred to call “opposition under the roof of the homeland.”

The phonebook includes a contact for opposition figure Alaa Arafat, who was a member of the Syrian Negotiations Commission and the Moscow Platform. Melhem appears to have considered him a representative of opposition figure Qadri Jamil, whose name is written in parentheses next to Arafat’s.

On the same page, Melhem recorded the number of opposition figure Mohammad Said Rassas, seemingly as a representative of Hassan Abdul Azim. Both men are members of the Communist Party and the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, raising questions about Melhem’s dealings with Syria’s internal opposition.

In response to questions from SIRAJ, Rassas stated that he was unaware of why his number appeared in Melhem’s phonebook, stressing that there had been no prior communication whatsoever. He also said he has been subject to a travel ban since 2008, issued by the National Security Office—the same body later headed by Melhem after it was restructured into the National Security Bureau.

Rassas also spent 15 years in prison between 1980 and 1995 after being tried before the State Security Court for his membership in the Communist Party.

Amid the dense web of military, intelligence, and political contacts, the phonebook also contains numbers for ordinary professionals—people essential even to the daily life of a general accused of war crimes. These include contacts labeled “health worker” and “barber,” as well as a number for “Abu Shaker – Immigration and Passports,” the civil registry office where Syrians often waited for hours to obtain travel documents. For an official of Melhem’s stature, having such contacts meant fast-tracking procedures for himself and those close to him.

Here, we present readers with a digital version mirroring the original phonebook left behind by Kifah Melhem, the former Director of the National Security Bureau under the ousted Assad regime. All phone numbers have been redacted to protect privacy and to respect ongoing and potential accountability processes related to violations committed during the former regime.

Creative direction and visual design: Radwan Awad
Editing and supervision: Manar Rachwani

The post “Damascus Dossier”: What Did Major General Kifah Melhem Leave Behind in His “Phonebook” After Fleeing? appeared first on SIRAJ.

That day, Haneen, who was working from Damascus with media outlets opposed to the Assad regime under pseudonyms, moved through several neighborhoods in the city. Around midday, she entered an educational center to use its internet connection and electricity. Suddenly, an unfamiliar man entered one of the halls, quickly scanned those present, and left. Minutes later, he returned and asked everyone to present their personal identification.

He began with journalist Haneen, who was sitting near the entrance. After identifying himself as an officer from the Political Security Directorate, he took her ID card. He did not check the documents of anyone else in the room because Haneen was the target.

Haneen was arrested and transferred to the Air Force Intelligence branch at Mezzeh Military Airport. During her detention, she was subjected to various forms of torture, both during interrogation and outside it, after investigators retrieved all the data from her communication devices. “I ended up in the hospital,” she told the investigation team, explaining that she was arrested through surveillance of her communications. She believes she was tracked by a device known locally as al-Rashida, technically referred to as an IMSI catcher.

“Shortly before my arrest, I started receiving SMS messages to reset passwords on my phone,” Haneen said. “When I was arrested, I saw three cars parked outside. The arrest happened just minutes after I arrived at the center and sat down.”

Haneen was not the only person arrested after being tracked through surveillance technologies under the former Assad regime. Arrest records show dozens of “targets” detained after being digitally monitored by security forces during Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The technologies used by the Assad regime to spy on Syrians and arrest them are typically employed by states to protect national security and combat organized crime. Assad, however, repurposed these capabilities to pursue political opponents—and later, individuals involved in business activities.

This occurred at a time when the Syrian regime and its allies on Syrian territory (Hezbollah and Iran) were themselves subject to Israeli intelligence penetration.

Digital copies of documents shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) as part of the “Damascus Dossier” project with the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ, reveal that before its fall, the Assad regime received training from technical and intelligence specialists from the People’s Republic of China and Iran on the use of so-called Rashida devices—4G systems designed to “track wanted individuals” and apprehend them.

The Damascus Dossier project is a collaborative investigative initiative led by the ICIJ, in partnership with Germany’s public broadcaster NDR. It brings together journalists from around the world to uncover new and disturbing details about one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century: the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

ICIJ, NDR, SIRAJ, and 126 journalists from 24 partner media organizations across 20 countries spent more than eight months organizing and analyzing the documents, consulting experts, and interviewing Syrian families still searching for loved ones who disappeared during Assad’s rule.

The Damascus Dossier project exposes the internal structure of Assad’s security apparatus and its connections to foreign governments and international organizations. The leak comprises more than 134,000 files and documents, primarily in Arabic, amounting to approximately 243 gigabytes of data.

The documents span more than three decades, from 1994 to December 2024, and originate from Air Force Intelligence and the General Intelligence Directorate in Syria.

Both agencies have been subjected to extensive U.S. and European sanctions due to their brutal practices, including torture and sexual violence.

The leaked materials include internal memos, reports, and correspondence that reveal the day-to-day operational mechanisms of Assad’s surveillance and detention network, as well as coordination with foreign allies such as Russia and Iran, and communications with UN-affiliated agencies operating inside Syria. The highly sensitive database also contains the names of several former Syrian intelligence officers.

The Assad regime continued training its personnel on the use of Rashida 4G devices until the end of 2024. Digital images of documents reviewed by the investigation team,  dated 2023, show that several intelligence officers received advanced training on Rashida 4G systems from what the documents refer to as “Chinese friends.”

In 2024, intelligence services continued—and intensified—this training program.

In addition, Assad adapted all available tracking systems to ensure the survival of his rule, including the pursuit of political opponents and individuals who possess foreign currency.

The Rashida, internationally known as an IMSI catcher (International Mobile Subscriber Identity catcher), is a device that intercepts mobile phone signals and captures the unique international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) associated with them.

Training Under the Supervision of “Chinese Friends”

In September 2024, as the Assad regime was struggling to survive amid growing international isolation and the mounting impact of sanctions under the Caesar Act, intelligence agencies were keen to enhance their counter-espionage capabilities. They organized specialized training courses to that end.

A classified cable titled “Report for the Attention of Brigadier Engineer, Head of Branch 280” was issued under a Top Secret designation.

According to the document, a request was made to “nominate an employee to attend a training course in counter-espionage.” The cable asked the brigadier to nominate two employees to attend a second round of practical training on “source management and technical processing.” Shortly thereafter, Warrant Officer First Class Hussein was assigned to attend the course.

In the same context, a covert tracking system was installed, and personnel were trained to operate it and follow protocols for coordinating with the Communications Directorate to meet target-tracking requirements. Ten intelligence officers from the Directorate were trained on operating the Rashida system for covert tracking and on carrying out training missions to increase their operational readiness and tracking capabilities.

These developments formed part of a comprehensive work plan detailed in a document titled “Tasks Accomplished in 2023,” which also records the “implementation of a training course for personnel under the supervision of Chinese friends on the use of the Rashida (4G).”

Tracking operations carried out by Assad’s intelligence services in 2023

Rim Kamal, a legal officer in the Human Rights and Business Unit at the Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP), said that surveillance constitutes a violation of privacy, but what follows can amount to crimes against humanity, such as torture and enforced disappearance.
“This means that companies involved may have contributed to international crimes,” she noted, adding that several countries have enacted laws to regulate corporate activities and mitigate risks associated with their operations.

She also pointed to the European Union’s recent adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which imposes a legal obligation on large companies—including certain non-EU companies operating within the European market—to identify, prevent, and address human rights and environmental risks and adverse impacts throughout their supply and value chains.

Targets Under Surveillance

Another exclusive document indicates that a group of targets referred by the Director of the General Intelligence Directorate was processed, detained, and arrested. Additional cases were handled based on information received by the Directorate through officers of Branch 280 and other intelligence sources.

At the time, the Syrian intelligence apparatus was headed by Hossam Louqa (born 1964), a Syrian intelligence officer believed to be currently in Russia. Louqa served as Director of the General Intelligence Directorate from 2019 until the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.

Drawing on decades of experience within Syria’s security services, Louqa played a central role in strengthening the country’s intelligence community and was known for his involvement in a wide range of security and intelligence operations inside Syria.

Under Louqa’s supervision, 233 targets (see illustration below)—all civilians—were tracked to arrest them. Among these were:

• 178 cases under unspecified “various topics,”
• two cases involving corruption in state institutions,
• five cases related to passport issuance,
• 11 drug-related cases,
• 17 cases involving transactions conducted in currencies other than the Syrian pound, and

20 individuals wanted by the intelligence services.

Of the 233 tracked targets, surveillance and follow-up memos were issued for five wanted individuals, while 12 targets remained under processing. Six targets were referred to Branch 300, seven to Branch 285, and the remaining cases to Branches 235 and 315.

A document summarizing activities completed in 2023 states that intelligence branches cooperated to arrest targets referred to them through the Rashida system. In the final quarter of that year, 30 targets were tracked, and seven arrests were carried out. These included 11 targets linked to Branch 322 (four arrested), five targets linked to Branch 345, four targets linked to Branch 320, and ten training targets.

Each year, intelligence branches compiled summaries of their surveillance activities in a file known as “System Targets.” The investigation team reviewed a document detailing targets tracked by the surveillance system between 2019 and 2024.

For each target, multiple phone numbers were listed, along with the names of subscribers and the alleged charges justifying surveillance. The records show hundreds of mobile numbers linked to their owners, locations, and accusations ranging from political to economic offenses—such as “communicating with a terrorist,” “special target,” “livestock smuggling,” or “discussing weapons.”

In some cases, targets were pursued for contacting a Lebanese number and insulting Hezbollah, while others were accused of conducting transactions in foreign currency. The final outcome for each target was recorded, often indicating arrest and detention, continued pursuit, or failure due to phone line deactivation. In some instances, surveillance led to numbers registered to individuals already detained, with the SIM card later reused by another person. Others were arrested after being tracked through their IMEI.

In an undated document reviewed by the investigation team—believed to date to 2024—Branch 280 of the General Intelligence Directorate offered assistance in tracking 19 individuals in November, shortly before Assad’s fall, using Rashida 4G devices. Four notorious security branches known for repression and torture—Branches 322, 318, 325, and Counter-Espionage Branch 300—jointly requested the arrest of these 19 individuals. Four of them were arrested using the Rashida systems.

Abusive Use of Technology

Since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, the Assad regime has systematically exploited technology to entrap opponents. Internet services were cut off from entire communities that relied on social media to report violations against civilians during protests against Assad.

Mehran Ayoun, director of the Salamtek team specializing in digital security and digital citizenship, said: “In the early days of the Syrian revolution, communications were completely cut off from the city of Douma and its surroundings. Yet at the same time, phones inside the city were receiving a signal, confirming the presence of Rashida devices impersonating cell towers.”

Ayoun added that in its final phase before collapse, the regime increasingly used Rashida devices to track traders and individuals engaged in financial activities, aiming to extract as much money as possible—not for criminal investigations or the public interest. He noted that in the final period before Assad’s fall, there was no revolutionary or military activity in major cities, particularly Damascus.

He emphasized that while states may possess IMSI catchers, their use normally requires a judicial warrant and must serve the public interest. Unauthorized data interception results in prosecutions and financial penalties—something that never occurred under the fallen regime.

Waseem Hassan, a telecommunications engineer who previously worked on building Damascus’s Al-Nasr Exchange within the central Operations and Maintenance Center (OMC) for landline communications, said that the rear section of the Al-Nasr Exchange building was—and remains—responsible for monitoring and controlling all communications in Syria. The same building housed communications monitoring rooms operated by Branch 225.

Hassan defected and left Syria after Branch 225 tasked him with developing an algorithm to detect relationships among callers. “If a group of people frequently call each other, that indicates they are an organized coordination group,” he said.
“At the time, the head of Branch 225, a brigadier, told me I had full authority to assemble a team of engineers and programmers to develop the algorithm internally, because procuring it from abroad would require a tender process and too much time.”

Before defecting in the early days of the Syrian revolution, Waseem Hassan accompanied one of his colleagues on a multi-day tour with technical equipment. He later discovered that the device was using a Rashida system, without his knowledge at the time of what kind of data was being collected. Prior to the mission, a communications antenna had been installed on the vehicle and connected to the device.

Intelligence Training in China

Possessing IMSI catcher devices is not, in itself, a violation. Most countries around the world own similar equipment, typically using it for strictly security and military purposes, in wartime, or to maintain public order and combat organized crime. However, following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, the Bashar al-Assad regime expanded its surveillance capabilities by acquiring new 4G Rashida systems and receiving technical training with direct assistance from China, then a key ally of the regime.

Syrian-Chinese relations date back to 1956, following Syria’s independence. During the Cold War and throughout the 1990s, relations remained limited before improving significantly in the early 2000s, driven by increased trade and economic exchanges.

By 2004, economic cooperation had grown substantially, with China becoming one of Syria’s largest suppliers of goods. Documents from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence indicate that between 2012 and 2024, Syrian intelligence officers and military personnel received training in various technical fields from Chinese military and intelligence officials. Syrian delegations traveled repeatedly to China for this purpose.

Documents dating back to 2012 show that the leadership of Air Force Intelligence sent several military personnel to China to attend a three-and-a-half-month workshop on YLG-6M military radar systems.

One document reviewed by the investigation team lists the names of Syrian officers dispatched to China for training in various fields related to communications and defense. These officers were nominated by Air Force Intelligence, which at the time was headed by Jamil Hassan, who is subject to both U.S. and EU sanctions.

China was among the countries that politically supported the Assad regime during the years of the revolution and used its veto power multiple times at the UN Security Council to block resolutions condemning Assad.

Neither the Chinese Embassy in Berlin nor the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to requests for comment from the investigation team and journalists from Germany’s public broadcaster NDR.

Data Extraction and Lock-Breaking Capabilities

Under Assad, security services also conducted training programs under Iranian supervision, which included equipping a so-called “Lock Unit” within one intelligence branch with specialized devices to open various types of locks. The unit received manual tools for opening vehicles, duplicating keys, detecting lock frequencies, and copying them onto new keys.

According to a document outlining activities completed in 2023, a training course was conducted to “qualify Syrian intelligence personnel in opening residential and office locks.”

In parallel, the Digital Crime Detection Unit was equipped with advanced skills, including specialized training in data recovery from hard drives, USB flash drives, and memory cards, particularly from damaged devices.

Syrian intelligence sought to further enhance its technical capabilities with Iranian support by keeping pace with modern applications, monitoring and tracking social media, and employing social engineering techniques, in addition to training in opening modern mechanical locks and electronic and mechanical safes.

Intelligence officers also received training in opening modern biometric vehicles, cloning frequencies of modern car remote controls, and acquiring the necessary tools and equipment for such operations.

Documents from Syrian intelligence dated 2012–2014 indicate that Iran trained Syrian military personnel, including on how to respond to unguided missile attacks on aircraft. The documents also allege that Iran assisted in maintaining Syrian government aircraft on several occasions and sold aircraft to Syria.

Another document from 2018 refers to a chemical weapons facility in Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus (Haran al-Awamid), reportedly operated primarily by Iranian workers.

Another document dated 2023 indicates that “Iranian colleagues” trained Syrian intelligence officers in opening vehicle, office, and residential locks and duplicating keys—training that appears aimed at improving their ability to pursue intelligence targets.

Neither the Iranian Ministry of Justice nor the Office of the Supreme Leader responded to requests for comment from the investigation team and NDR journalists.

Surveillance Technology Before the Syrian Revolution

The Assad regime had a long-standing history of importing surveillance technologies and electronic equipment to monitor communications and internet traffic.

Open-source research identified several companies worldwide that supplied the Syrian regime with surveillance technologies prior to the uprising, showing how the regime acquired communications equipment that enabled the tracking, arrest, and torture of dissidents based on intercepted calls and communications.

One month before the Syrian uprising began, in February 2011, the regime obtained a U.S.-made Central Monitoring System (CMS), supplied to the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment.

The supplier later paid a USD 100,000 fine to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

The system was capable of collecting data on internet browsing, email, online chat, and Voice over IP (VoIP) calls. The U.S. State Department concluded that the system could be used by the Syrian government to intensify repression against the Syrian population.

The regime also acquired Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies, enabling intelligence services to monitor internet activity, including browsing and email communications. One company reportedly sold DPI systems that could be used by the Syrian regime for surveillance purposes.

Following the outbreak of the revolution in March 2011 and the imposition of international sanctions, the Assad regime appears to have turned increasingly to China for technological systems. Numerous Chinese companies have faced allegations of selling telecommunications equipment to authoritarian regimes such as Iran and Syria. A Reuters report revealed that Chinese tech giant Huawei used front companies under names such as Skycom and Canicula.

Assad’s Interest in Chinese Technology

Months before the regime’s fall, Branch 280 prepared a detailed study of a Chinese company, which was reviewed by the investigation team. The study included extensive information about the company’s smart solutions, related systems, and technologies involving identity verification, data storage, and transportation systems. However, it remains unverified whether the company supplied any equipment to the Assad regime or established any commercial relationship with it.

Engineer Waseem Hassan said, “During my work, most of the equipment came from Huawei. They provided all the technologies and equipment, to the extent that employees competed to be selected for training missions to China.”

He added that in 2011, following sanctions and the withdrawal of many companies from Syria, Huawei significantly expanded its presence with the Syrian government.
“I personally worked with Chinese technicians who came to install servers and other equipment. Chinese experts were continuously operating at the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment,” he said.

According to a report by SC Media, multiple companies in Hong Kong and China sold Rashida (IMSI catcher) devices on the black market for up to USD 15,000, contingent on “promises of legal use.”

Legal Responsibility of Companies

Rim Kamal, a legal officer at the Human Rights and Business Unit of the Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP), said there are legal consequences in such cases.
“Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies can become involved in violations in several ways.”

She added that even if companies do not directly cause harm, they may be complicit through intermediaries.
“It is the responsibility of the selling company to know who will ultimately benefit from this technology before completing the sale,” Kamal said.

Access to Sensitive Data Without Judicial Authorization

Digital copies of documents reviewed by the investigation team show that security agencies had access to sensitive information on all mobile phone users.

Security branches routinely submitted names, phone numbers, or national identification numbers to Branch 300, which coordinated with the Communications Directorate to retrieve data such as incoming and outgoing calls, subscriber identity, last known geographic location, and in some cases, recorded call and message content—confirming expert testimony.

When asked whether security agencies could access subscriber systems without facilitation or consent from telecom companies, Alaa Ghazzal, a digital safety and information security specialist, explained: “Most systems—particularly subscriber identity, coverage, IMEI, and IMSI systems—require telecom companies to grant access in order to retrieve data.”

He added that telecom companies control both subscriber identity systems and coverage systems.

Subscriber identity systems provide phone number data, including subscriber identity, point and date of purchase, and sales outlet information. Coverage systems provide data on cell towers connected to a device or number, enabling location tracking.

Mehran Ayoun, director of the Salamtek digital security and digital citizenship team, said:
“This means that security branches have access to telecom companies’ infrastructure, as evidenced by their ability to know when someone uses a new phone number or to identify all numbers associated with an individual via their national ID.”

Neither Syriatel nor MTN, Syria’s two mobile phone operators, responded to questions from the investigation team regarding intelligence access to sensitive user data or the role of cell towers in facilitating arrests.

Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad
Research contribution: Wael Qarsaifi

The post “Damascus Dossier”: How China and Iran Trained Assad’s Intelligence Services to Spy on the Syrians appeared first on SIRAJ.

The corpses bore clear signs of torture and starvation. Nevertheless, three doctors at the hospital — a resident physician “S. B.”, the head of the emergency department “A. H.”, and the chief medical officer “M. A.”  immediately issued a medical report stating that all eight persons had died of “cardiac arrest and respiratory failure.”

For years, the hospital had enjoyed a “good reputation” among soldiers and their families and was home to some of Syria’s most well-known doctors. Yet behind its walls lay a reality far darker than the image promoted by the Assad regime.

On the hospital’s seventh floor, an entire ward was designated for detainees transferred from security branches. There, systematic torture and mass killing took place, followed by institutionalized falsification of medical reports stating false causes of death, a process in which senior medical staff at the hospital actively participated.

It was no coincidence that eight detainees died of “cardiac arrest.” This phrase functioned as a medical cover formula used by the regime for years, beginning with the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011, to conceal deaths under torture in its prisons and security branches. The regime exploited its control over military hospitals under the Syrian Army’s Medical Services Directorate, relying on doctors who participated in torture and falsified medical reports documenting the deaths of thousands of political detainees.

For these doctors, everything appeared routine: falsifying causes of death, signing official documents to legitimize them according to an exclusive body intake document reviewed by the investigative team, and then transferring the bodies to mass graves. Over time, this falsification became standard practice and an entrenched method carried out by doctors and nurses who still live among us today, whether inside Syria or in Germany, a country that welcomed millions of Syrians fleeing massacres and mass killing. Some of these doctors later fled there, yet we were able to track them, as this eight-month investigation reveals.

This joint investigation by (SIRAJ, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Germany’s public broadcaster NDR, and Süddeutsche Zeitung, as part of the Damascus Dossier project, reveals through exclusive military hospital documents how dozens of doctors, some of whom continue to practice medicine in Germany, participated in the torture of detainees and the falsification of their causes of death in Assad’s prisons and medical facilities.

The documents include more than 70 death certificates issued by Harasta Military Hospital, all signed by doctors from the same institution.

In cooperation with its partners, SIRAJ formed a multidisciplinary team of investigative journalists, open-source researchers, and analysts. By combining documents, survivor testimonies, and witness accounts from former hospital staff, and using open-source investigation techniques, the team obtained evidence indicating that at least 18 Syrian doctors who previously worked at the notorious military hospital are now residing in Germany, some holding senior positions in German hospitals.

Among them is a doctor alleged to have performed surgery without anesthesia on a detainee, called Nael, interviewed by the investigative team. l.

The investigation is part of the Damascus Dossier, a collaborative investigative project led by the ICIJ in partnership with NDR, involving 126 journalists from 26 media organizations across 20 countries, who spent over eight months organizing documents, analyzing evidence, consulting experts, conducting interviews, and tracing the doctors now hidden behind white coats that conceal their past in Assad’s military hospitals.

Official estimates indicate that approximately 7,000 Syrian doctors are currently registered in Germany.

From Harasta Military Hospital to Germany

From the moment the documents were obtained, the investigative team began tracing the identities of the doctors to determine their whereabouts and roles following the fall of the Assad regime, and their involvement in the machinery of torture and killing that crushed the lives of thousands of Syrians over the years of revolution.

The team interviewed Dr. “A,” currently residing in Germany, and was accused by a former detainee of torturing him and performing surgery without anesthesia at Harasta Military Hospital. The doctor acknowledged that he had access to the seventh floor and admitted that systematic torture took place there. However, he strongly denied committing any crime or violating medical ethics, claiming he never breached professional standards during his tenure, a narrative cast into doubt by the harrowing details provided by the survivor.

It remains unclear whether these doctors acted voluntarily or were coerced due to their positions within hospitals where detainees were systematically executed.

Documents reviewed by the investigative team show that 36 doctors across four military hospitals signed death certificates listing “cardiac arrest” and “respiratory failure” as causes of death for 92 detainees, including 38 unidentified individuals. Except for one case, the documents do not indicate that bodies were handed over to families or clarify their fate.

These records strongly suggest that the doctors actively participated in concealing evidence of the Assad regime’s killing of thousands of Syrians under torture.

The team verified documents signed by Dr. “A” during his tenure at Harasta Military Hospital and found that he signed reports stating that 14 detainees died of “cardiac arrest” and “respiratory failure,” including unidentified bodies transferred from the notorious Al-Khatib Branch (Branch 251) of the State Security apparatus.

Investigators also traced the doctor’s social media activity, uncovering close ties with another resident physician, Dr. “S”, at Harasta, a doctor who signed the death certificates of eight unidentified detainees and was repeatedly named by survivors who accused him of torture.

One of his Facebook posts shows him bidding farewell to colleagues at the hospital, confirming his employment there. In another post dated July 3, 2013, he shared a photo of a phone he claimed to have taken from a “wounded fighter,” writing:
“There is always time to ask a wounded fighter questions unrelated to war, death, terrorism, and revolution to pull him out of Tora Bora. I see what I see. I ask, and he answers.”

According to documents, Dr. “S” signed medical reports stating that eight individuals died of “cardiac arrest” and “respiratory failure.”

Human rights expert Moatasem Al-Kilani stated: “Issuing death certificates that misrepresent the true cause of death places doctors under direct criminal liability for complicity in killings under torture and for concealing evidence, pursuant to Article 4 of the Convention Against Torture.”

By reviewing employment records, investigators confirmed that all named doctors worked at Harasta Military Hospital and that their signatures matched those on detainee death certificates. No evidence was found contradicting survivor and witness testimonies.

To further corroborate accounts and verify signatures, the team conducted multiple interviews with former Harasta doctors now living in Germany. All confirmed survivors’ accounts of systematic torture on the hospital’s seventh floor, citing screams they heard or emaciated bodies they saw.

Initially, all doctors denied participating in torture and claimed restricted access to the detainee ward. Others asserted they “only practiced medicine” and that decisions were controlled by military personnel.

Commenting on the evidence, Swedish prosecutor Reena Devgun said: “This type of evidence is crucial for building cases, whether to establish the systematic nature of crimes, a key requirement for crimes against humanity, or to establish the responsibility of medical staff who should have known what was happening, given the massive scale of torture and deaths.”

The Seventh Floor: Torture Without Purpose

The seventh floor of Harasta Military Hospital was supposedly designated for treating detainees transferred from security branches due to illness or injury. However, testimonies from survivors and interviews with over 12 witnesses, including doctors and nurses, confirmed it functioned as a permanent torture chamber.

Firas Al-Shater, one of the few survivors, describes Harasta as a “medical slaughterhouse.” Transferred there in 2012, he was assigned a number, blindfolded, and thrown onto a bed with other detainees.

He recalls: “In security branches, they torture you to extract confessions. In Harasta, they torture you 24 hours a day for no reason.”

Al-Shater and others describe constant beatings by the army and security personnel. Medical staff also participated. He remembers a nurse extinguishing a cigarette on his foot and estimates that more than 200 cigarettes were put out on his body without receiving any treatment.

He believes the morgue often overflowed, forcing doctors to place bodies in hallways. “I called it the hospital of death.”

Nail Al-Maghrebi, who now lives in Stuttgart, Germany, was also among the victims of torture at Harasta Military Hospital. In 2012, Syrian army soldiers shot him at close range, wounding him in the leg. He was then tortured, filmed, and the video was published on social media.

Following his injury, Nail was transferred to Harasta Military Hospital, where he says he was tortured by a doctor identified as “A,” who inserted metal screws into the bones of his leg without anesthesia. “I screamed in pain until I lost consciousness,” he recalls. The doctor then poured alcohol under Nail’s nose to revive him before continuing the painful procedure. “One of the guards told me that pain is a requirement for treating detainees.”

Harasta Military Hospital has remained closed since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. Yet its corridors undoubtedly still hold thousands of documents pointing to the names of those involved in torture and killing crimes committed against the regime’s victims over the years of the Syrian revolution.

The Journey of Death

On March 19, 2013, a detainee held by Branch 251 of the State Security Directorate, known also as the “Al-Khatib Branch,” was transferred to Harasta Military Hospital.

According to a document issued by the head of the branch, the detainee described as an “armed terrorist” died on March 25, 2013, allegedly due to “meningitis,” and his body was placed in the hospital morgue.

Based on orders from the Branch chief, the hospital administration was authorized to hand over the body to the family through a notification issued by the military police.

This family was the only one allowed to learn the fate of their son and receive his body, according to dozens of documents reviewed by the investigation team. Meanwhile, countless other families remain unaware of what happened to their loved ones or the atrocities that led to their deaths before the causes were falsified in military hospitals.

The investigation team reviewed dozens of documents issued by four military hospitals affiliated with the Military Medical Services Administration and the Ministry of Defense under the former Assad regime:

• Harasta Military Hospital (“Hospital 600”)
• Tishreen Military Hospital in rural Damascus
• Mezzeh Military Hospital (Hospital 601) in Damascus
• Red Crescent Hospital on Baghdad Street in Damascus

The documents reveal the deaths of 92 detainees, including 38 unidentified bodies, most of them detainees held by the Al-Khatib Branch.

Swedish prosecutor Reena Devgon stated that the materials being revealed today, including photographs, documents, and medical reports, are of exceptional importance because they not only demonstrate the scale of violations but also prove the systematic nature of torture within Syrian intelligence units and military hospitals.

“This type of evidence is what legally allows us to build cases involving war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Devgon added.

A clear pattern emerges in medical reports issued by military hospitals and signed by resident doctors, on-call physicians, and heads of emergency departments. Detainees brought in from security branches are recorded as arriving dead from the General Intelligence Directorate. Doctors then document and sign medical reports repeatedly citing causes of death such as “cardiac arrest” and “respiratory failure,” despite photographic evidence showing clear signs of torture and extreme emaciation resulting from starvation in detention centers.

The former regime’s systematic policy of falsifying evidence was not limited to issuing medical reports. In numerous cases reviewed by the investigation team, documents from Mezzeh Military Hospital (601) were signed by doctors as “witnesses” to detainees’ deaths on specific dates, again attributing them to heart and respiratory failure and claiming the detainees arrived dead.

The documents and administrative orders do not specify the fate of these bodies afterward. However, testimonies and evidence gathered from witnesses and open-source investigations point to a single destination: mass graves.

Mapping the Machinery of Death

The investigation team interviewed a doctor who served for six months at Harasta Military Hospital in 2012, the same year referenced in dozens of reviewed documents. During his service, he witnessed horrifying details of how detainees’ bodies were brought to the hospital, photographed, loaded onto trucks, and transported to mass graves.

This testimony enabled the team to reconstruct a complete map of body transportation operations at Harasta Military Hospital by matching the details with satellite imagery from 2012 and 2013.

Satellite image of Harasta Military Hospital showing body storage, photography sites, and refrigeration trucks used to transport bodies to mass graves – Source: Maxar

The doctor confirmed that in 2012, he personally observed white refrigerated containers (Site 3) being filled with black body bags, leaving the hospital clearly visible from the doctors’ residential building (Site 1).

When he asked a soldier why the containers were placed on the helicopter landing pad, the soldier replied that it was to keep the smell of decomposing bodies away from the hospital.

Bodies were placed into bags at two different locations: behind the morgue’s rear entrance (Site 6) or near a location where bodies were photographed (Site 2). Due to limited space, many photos were taken directly on the helicopter pad (Site 5), facing the doctors’ residence.

According to the doctor, trucks did not arrive empty; they already contained bodies and remained on the helicopter pad for days after being loaded with corpses from Harasta Military Hospital.

He stated that the hospital processed a fixed number of bodies, approximately 1,180 corpses per week. One soldier was responsible for registering deaths and driving refrigerated containers to collect bodies from the hospital.

That soldier later “committed suicide,” though the doctor suspects he was killed because he knew too much and had spoken to others about the body transfers.

The doctor also recalled frequently seeing a “red liquid” leaking from the refrigeration containers, believed to be bodily fluids. Satellite images corroborate his testimony, showing red stains at former container locations after they were moved to another part of the helicopter pad.

Torture on the Hospital Bed

Harasta Military Hospital was only one station in a medical system transformed by the regime into a direct extension of secret human slaughterhouses.

One former detainee, arrested on charges of planning to defect, said he was transferred from Sednaya Prison to Tishreen Military Hospital in 2012 or 2013 for “treatment” of severe scabies.

He was not alone. He was transported alongside three living detainees, six corpses, and four individuals “between life and death.”

Upon arrival, hospital staff handed him ten body bags and ordered him to place the “patients” inside them.

At first, he thought the number of bags exceeded the number of bodies. He soon realized why: hospital staff strangled the four detainees who were still breathing and then ordered him to bag them as well. He was forced to drag the bags down the stairs and throw them into a large container prepared for this purpose.

Afterward, he was taken to an upper floor and examined by a doctor who provided no treatment other than two ibuprofen pills, despite his severe condition. He recalls constant humiliation and abuse by medical and military staff. When he went to the bathroom, he was shocked to see dozens of bodies piled on top of each other.

International Accountability

The trial of Syrian doctor Alaa Mousa, who was sentenced to life in prison in Germany, continues to weigh heavily on those involved in human rights violations under the Assad regime, especially those who fled to Europe.

The historic Frankfurt trial was groundbreaking: it was not a prosecution of a military officer or intelligence official, but of a doctor. It paved the way for broader accountability of all participants in the killing machine, including medical professionals who helped conceal evidence or extract confessions, under universal jurisdiction laws.

Syrian international criminal law expert Moatasem Al-Kailani stated: “International law criminalizes participation in torture, whether through direct involvement, complicity, or even silence. Conduct such as performing medical procedures without anesthesia or participating in interrogations violates professional medical ethics and constitutes clear breaches of the UN Convention Against Torture.”

Commenting on the investigation’s findings, Dr. Susan Jonah, Vice President of the German Medical Association, said German authorities must urgently follow up on the evidence and examine all materials presented.

“Syrian doctors are an indispensable part of Germany’s healthcare system,” she added. “But it is essential to identify the few who participated in torture in Syria. No doctor involved in torture should be allowed to practice medicine in Germany in any capacity.”

Due to the unique nature of international criminal law, Germany’s Federal Prosecutor can prosecute perpetrators for crimes committed abroad even if the victims are not German nationals.

Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad
Research and data collection: Mawadda Klass

The post The Executioners of the Seventh Floor: Assad’s Doctors Fled from Harasta Military Hospital to Germany appeared first on SIRAJ.

Without the hacksaw, the day’s haul is paltry. He and his friend Basel*, two years his senior, used the fine-toothed blades to weaken the steel rods sticking out of building debris, then twisted them until they snapped. They must now resort to picking up scrap off cuts, but after months of scavenging among the same mounds of grey rubble- once opposition suburbs turned battlefield during the 14 years of war – there is only so much left.

To them, steel scrap fetches only 500 Syrian pounds per kilo – the equivalent of four US cents. On a good day, their harvest might come to 25 kilos. On a bad day, a meagre ten. It’s a risky business, and they know it, but it reportedly pays more than picking up plastic.

While Ahmad and Basel’s day is slow, around them, others are swarming across the blasted land. They drift in and out of the scene, swallowed by the open bellies of the buildings, only to resurface in their gouged-out undergrounds, as they pick their way across a pale blanket of shattered masonry, perhaps just inches away from the next sleeping mortar round.

They are covered in multiple layers of clothes and white chalk, their faces half-hidden by dusty rags: men and women distinguishable only by their eyes, bloodshot with fatigue, and by the forms of their white, calloused hands, which they would not shake with visitors. Almost every day, they scavenge from morning until sunset, amid the reek of burnt plastic, asbestos dust, and broken concrete.

For years, long before rebel troops marched over the capital in December 2024, poor displaced families and their children have come to the ruined peripheries of Damascus to collect scrap rebar, aluminium cables, and twisted pieces of iron plates. Under the Assad regime, most of these lands were no go areas. For the past four years of war, Ahmad and Basel’s families have had access under a special agreement: they would be among the many that made up Assad’s personal army of scrappers.

“The Fourth Division would grant you permission to enter here to work and sell to them,” said one of the men that gathered around us during a break from scavenging through the rubble, the face hidden by an ashy rag, “you couldn’t sell to anyone else.” rights

A scene that should haunt us all: one piece of this steel scrap – bought for a mere 500 Syrian pounds per kilo by desperate families during and after the war, with the covert backing of local warlords – may have been used to build a stadium in Brazil, the Hong Kong International Airport or Dubai’s most famous luxury hotel, the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab; it may also have ended up in a brand-new building apartment in Germany, or found its way into motorways in Romania.

Ahmad and Basel are at the bottom of a supply chain that is indispensable for ‘cleaning’ one of the dirtiest industries in the world: steelmaking.

‘Clean’ steel

Steel forms the backbone of industrial society: from railway lines and ships to the beams that support our buildings, and the weapons that can destroy them. The process of producing this durable material from iron ore, carbon, and various other metals is responsible for almost 11% of the global CO2 emissions.

In the last decade, new technologies to produce recycled steel have garnered the industry’s interest: it is cleaner and, most of all, cheaper; electric arc furnaces, under the correct conditions, consume around 70% less energy than traditional iron ore-based blast furnaces. Turkey’s producers were particularly compelled: in two decades they turned recycled steel production into the fifth largest contributor to the national economy. Turkey is now listed among the major steel producers in the world, with a steel export value estimated at $16.1 billion USD.

The issue with scrap metal, indispensable for the production of recycled steel, is that it is limited. There is barely enough of it in the world to meet the demand. As production volumes of steel are surging worldwide, ferrous scrap is now treated as strategic for the future of many national metal industries.

As the world’s largest importer of ferrous scrap, Turkey has turned it into its humble gold. Yet, not all is known about the country’s discreet sourcing network, which experts and researchers we spoke to described as opaque, unmonitored, and hard to trace.

In economies that industrialised early, scrap metal is abundant. Europe’s scrapyards are overflowing with end-of-life ferrous goods, which are the source of more than half of Turkey’s imported scrap. When the corridors of Brussels filled with whispers of a possible export ban – meant to protect the continent’s bleeding supply -Turkish companies began to look elsewhere to keep the imports flowing, sources in the sector told us. And as it happens, few events generate metal waste as swiftly as war.

We estimated that over the last five years, between 6 and 10% of the scrap recycled in Turkey came from countries we can define as in conflict: Syria, but also Libya, Lebanon, Ukraine, Russia, and Israel/Palestine.

Despite the pittance paid to vulnerable people in conflict zones to dismantle entire battle-scarred neighbourhoods, the scrap metal trade represents a $46 billion market.  Because of a lack of international monitoring and an opaque supply chain, Turkey – and the world’s – hunger for scrap predictably attracts exploitative individuals hoping to bankroll their wars.

The New Arab (TNA), in collaboration with SIRAJ and El Paìs, documented the journey of steel scrap headed to Turkish mills from war-torn countries. We searched for documents in abandoned Assad-era checkpoints, sifted through tens of thousands of maritime traffic records, examined satellite images for shipments, and pieced together leads through dozens of conversations with workers and experts across multiple countries.

This year-long investigation proves that, during the last decade, roughly one tenth of Turkey’s ferrous scrap was sourced from war economies. Under Assad’s order, scrap-loaded trucks exited the country from Lebanese border crossings, to eventually turn up in Turkish private companies’ scrapyards.

Trade data show that several Turkish steel mills ship their finished products to European clients – meaning that conflict-sourced steel is most likely used across the continent.

Opaque due diligence

TNA contacted human rights officers within large European construction companies. Though they requested anonymity, they admitted that human rights abuses in the scrap metal supply chain can go overlooked within due diligence processes. They justified this by pointing to the complexities of the trade, notably its fragmented procurement and limited traceability.

Other sources from Artimet, an independent Turkish inspection company monitoring various stages of the scrap supply chain, confirmed to TNA that their quality controls consist of merely visual inspections.

Artimet representatives added that inspections would not probe how the scrap had been collected or who had profited from it. They told TNA that the end client would not care.

Many of the steel companies in Turkey declined to speak to us or ignored our requests for comment. These include Diler, Kroman, Mescier, Yazici, and Yesilyurt Demir Çelik, companies which this investigation found to be involved in procuring scrap metal from conflict countries. TNA also contacted Turkey’s Ministry of Customs and Trade, inquiring about the controls in place to detect conflict-linked scrap metal. We received no response in time for publication.

The general director of one of Turkey’s major steel companies candidly admitted, during a conversation on background, that scrap may be sourced from war-ravaged territories, including Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and Libya: “The steel of the destroyed buildings [there] will become scrap.” The company publicly declares exporting to more than 60 countries.

Many in the sector seem to be mostly clueless about the possible implications of their tainted supply chains.

The Foreign Trade Department of one of Turkey’s major scrap-dealing companies told TNA that they didn’t have specific policies in place to rule out links between imported scrap and warring factions. “We only purchase scrap from places we know and have worked with for many years,” they explained. The same scrap may then be sold to European countries like Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

While the Turkish scrap-dealing company claimed it was not importing scrap from Syria, they admitted to buying from both eastern and western Libya.  Our investigation shows that this is not uncommon: Syria and Libya are just some of the many countries in conflict where the scrap metal trade has been exploited to feed the region’s war machine. Turkish companies are even trading with entities with which the Ankara government has been at loggerheads for years.

Israel, for instance, is among the countries at war from which Turkey buys scrap metal. It remains difficult to determine how much of this scrap originates from Israeli industrial and consumer waste, and how much comes from the devastation it wreaks upon the occupied Palestinian territories. Turkey imposed a commercial embargo on Israel only in mid-2024, in protest of its genocide in Gaza. Despite this, some Turkish media outlets reported that scrap shipments continued through third-country vessels or falsified freight documents, leading the Turkish government to sanction several ships involved. This way of dodging restrictions would be consistent with industry practices revealed by our investigation.

Trading with entities in conflict affected countries is not inherently illegal, but in some cases trade is restricted or banned under sanctions, laws or embargoes. Specifically, for cargoes of steel scrap coming from Haftar’s Libya or Assad’s Syria, the habitual supply standards and procedures are not enough, a senior researcher at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), Blanca Racionero Gomez, explained to TNA.

“It’s not so important if you have suppliers coming from war-torn countries. What’s important is if their supply is financing conflict, is exacerbating human rights abuses and is causing environmental damage. That’s what’s important, and what needs to be addressed through due diligence processes,” said Racionero Gomez.

“Because it’s a conflict-affected area, you need to […] be more vigilant than in other areas where information is easier to access,” explained the BHRRC researcher, calling on any company downstream the steel scrap trade to be held accountable.

Syria’s 4th Division and its army of scrap pickers

Wherever Assad’s special army of scrap collectors went, only cement would remain.

Most of Qaboun, a suburb in Damascus, long contested between opposition and loyalist forces during the civil war, has been reduced to a grey wasteland of pulverised cement. There are paths to walk through the mounds and the waste is partitioned into small islands of debris. Anywhere outside these beaten trails may be unsafe: unexploded ordnance lays below the surface, sleeping but only lightly.

The horizon of desolation, sentenced by the low, uneven expanse of crumbling concrete, is betrayed by cut-outs of lush green, disorienting against the opaque haze that surrounds us. Life is flowing back in, now that the Assad forces can no longer prevent residents from returning to the hull of their homes.

As in many of the areas that bore witness to years of fierce battles, none of the buildings’ roofs remained: not because of the fighting, but because the steel rebars had been stripped from the supporting columns. Some recognised what remained of their home only by the pattern on the floor tiles, recalled Mohammad al-Imam, an activist from Daraya, another gutted town south-west of the capital, which rose to prominence as an iconic arena of civil resistance during the early phase of the uprising against Assad.

As Mohammad walks us through Daraya’s barren streets, ringed by the husks of roofless buildings, he regularly points at floors hanging in the void, pinning it on Assad’s forces: “This one was taken down, you see, look, its iron was removed – but this is not detonation, this has been taken down to take the iron.”

They wouldn’t say anything about the children; anyone could work, confirmed Ahmad’s mother, recalling the four years where they had no choice but to toil as steel pickers for the 4th Division, the Syrian military’s elite unit. Her large blue eyes gleaming over a face powdered in white dust by a day of sifting through rubble. “They used to buy it cheaply, [but sold it] expensively,” she told TNA, “it’s known.”

Formed in the 1980s, the 4th Armoured Division effectively served as a praetorian guard for the Assad family, charged with protecting the regime from internal and external threats. Over the course of the civil war, Western sanctions cut Syria off from the global financial system and the 4th Division became central to the regime’s war economy, developing into an amorphous parastate towering over strategic – and mostly illicit – businesses in Syria (such as the manufacture and smuggling of captagon).

It operated under Major General Maher al-Assad’s command, the brother of toppled President Bashar al-Assad and arguably the second most powerful man in the regime. Their intimidating checkpoints were pervasive across the country, yet the Division’s true circle of power clustered around Damascus’s peripheries.

It’s no accident that Qaboun and Daraya, among the areas to suffer the most extensive pillaging, were under the Division’s control. The scrap metal trade – mostly extracted from plundered private properties and infrastructure in former rebel-controlled areas – was one of the unit’s economic revenues.

Bashar al-Assad used to layer relatives, proxies, and front companies between him and his revenue sources. The Syrian Minerals and Investment Company – a private entity founded in 2018 – worked as one of these fronts through the 4th Division.

In 2019, the Assad regime issued Resolution No. 3061, granting the company the right to import and export key materials, including metals, iron, and aluminium. The firm was in charge of issuing permits for contractors, who would purchase scrap on its behalf.

Two years after its establishment, it had already been sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for its connection with businessman Khodr Ali Taher, a man with long-standing ties with the 4th division. Taher was also known as the “Prince of Crossings” in national media, for the ease he would be wending his way across regime and rebel-controlled areas.

Western sanctions and arrest warrants hang over the heads of many businessmen and military commanders who were part of the 4th Division’s network that capitalised on the bloody scrap metal trade.

Previous investigations have already exposed how the Assad regime and its cronies had been profiting from looting iron scrap from opposition areas that would feed the country’s steel plants. Yet little is known about how scrap has turned into a profitable export commodity sold to Turkish companies; a discreet trade that lasted years, while Turkey-backed opposition militias and Assad’s army have been battling each other.

Burn the evidence

The road winding through the Masnaa-Jdeidat Yabous passage, connecting Beirut to Damascus, is lined with Bashar al-Assad’s faces. Most have been removed from billboards and posters, but those that could not be taken down have been crossed out.

Next to the traffic highway, amid sallow mountain ridges, vehicles laden with goods and people thread the main Beirut-Damascus crossing. An unassuming and doorless single-storey structure stands on the side of the road. Another of the President’s crossed-out faces, plastered over the outer wall, greets passersby.

The place is trashed, full of torched, half-burnt documents. Perhaps, as the news that Assad’s forces were crumbling, someone returned to the checkpoint in a bid to destroy evidence of the regime’s activities, a story often heard in Syria after December 8, 2024.

This was a 4th Division checkpoint located near the Yafour Bridge, in a rural area west of Damascus, along the M1 highway to Beirut,  just 20 kilometers from the Lebanese border crossing. One of the many under the 4th Division’s sway, racked up across major domestic and international highways, part of a strategy to take control of vital export routes.

When Assad’s many faces still towered over these lands, this checkpoint was expecting to see a hundred scrap metal trucks cross in just one month. (We can’t know when exactly – part of the page was burned. The date was lost). Each lorry had to pay its due, the amounts spelled in black ink in an exclusive “pre-feasibility study” we photographed. In just one month, the 4th Division was planning to extract a total of roughly 125 million Syrian pounds [$9,615] from 100 scrap metal trucks en route to Lebanon.

For years, this unremarkable checkpoint quietly collected proof of a major export route for scrap pillaged by regime forces and its transfer to Lebanon. Scrupulous workers amassed records detailing the passage’s ins and outs. Most of them are lost in the arson. But the few pieces we were able to photograph provide insights into how Assad’s economic machine was moving metal scrap and other goods across the country. The documents also offer a rare glimpse into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue likely generated by this checkpoint. Some of the most recent records date back to September 2024.

On 10 April 2024, the Yafour Bridge checkpoint received a fax from another crossing. “For your information, no commercial convoy crossed the post.” Written in a few lines of black printed ink and signed twice, the headed notification passed from Colonel Louay Ahmad Habib, who was in charge of the Manbij crossing (also known as al-Tayhah crossing) between the regime and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to Major-General Ghassan Bilal, Maher al-Assad’s right-hand man. Bilal is also on the EU and US sanctions lists for his affiliation with the Assad regime. By the time we found the document, he had likely already fled.

Documents we photographed confirm that scrap trucks, given their high value, were escorted by units of the 4th Division from the industrial centres of Hasiya, al-Matalla, and Adra across the border to Lebanon.

“They [i.e. the 4th Division] would give you permission to transport the materials to the factory. If you didn’t inform them, the vehicle, materials, and driver would be seized. This is the rule,” said a scrap reseller we talked to in Damascus.

According to the documents, the entity in charge of authorising the deployment of the 4th Division to escort scrap trucks was the Syrian Presidency’s General Secretariat, headed by Mansour Fadlallah Azzam, who is under Western sanctions for his role in the violent repression of the Syrian uprising. He was also Minister of Presidential Affairs between 2009 and 2023. The current whereabouts of Azzam are unknown.

Across the Syrian-Turkish border

The Masnaa passage isn’t the only corridor we were able to identify. Although to a lesser extent, evidence suggests that another crossing enabled metal scrap exports to Turkey.

Under a makeshift tent, nestled by mounds of grey waste and twisted metals that rest along the road connecting the small village of Killi with Idlib, in northern Syria, a collector we interviewed in a crowded scrapyard recounted the days during the war when larger players selling to Turkey would buy material from these very piles.

“This scrap iron comes from homes, and we buy it from local collectors” he explained. “The [local] iron companies buy it from us, export to Turkey, and also sell scrap within the liberated areas (i.e. areas under opposition control before Assad was toppled).” At a distance, young men press large chunks of iron scrap inside a deafening machine.

Turkey’s trade data indicate that, between 2021 and 2024, over 200 thousand tons of metal scrap entered the country from areas under rebel control in northern Syria. Most transited from the Bab al-Hawa border gate, which was manned by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the hardline Islamist paramilitary group which is leading the new Syrian administration.

The Idlib deputy governor, Qutaybah Khalaf, told TNA that, over the years, Turkey-bound scrap may have passed through the rebel-controlled border crossings. But he described this trade as “private work” that saw no involvement from local authorities.

However, experts do not discount the likelihood that entities loyal to the regime could have collaborated with opposition forces in facilitating the scrap trade.

“Even for the captagon trade, for example, there were some people inside opposition areas who were working with the 4th Division and Hezbollah,” said Ayman Aldassouky, a researcher at Syrian think tank Omran for Strategic Studies, who focussed on the 4th Division’s economic network.

Nonetheless, statistics show that only marginal amounts of scrap flowed to Turkey via Syria’s northern land crossings. Turkish customs data may capture just part of the trade, and the 4th Division may as well have used those routes to smuggle scrap directly. But inland roads were fraught with opposition factions, which likely made Lebanon the main route – an off-book trade some deny exists, given the lack of official records. Were it not for a small anomaly in those same data.

The Lebanon route: numbers don’t add up. 

There is no trace of the trucks loaded with metal scrap flowing in through the Masnaa crossing in Lebanese public statistics. Yet something may give it away: the quantity of scrap metal generated locally seems not to keep up with the export volumes listed in national and international statistics. An unregistered source of metal scrap, slipping through the border, could explain the irregularity.

Most Lebanese workers and companies we spoke to deny dealing directly with Syrian scrap, but it seems no secret that Lebanon is a corridor for this trade. A source from the city of  Baalbek – a known hub for smuggling, northeast of Beirut – with personal knowledge of these networks, reported they were offered Syrian steel for a construction project by a contractor once.

Antoine Srour, a scrapyard owner in Beirut, explained to TNA that, in the aftermath of the latest Israeli war on Lebanon, “metal from the South all went to traders from the South. And metal from Dahiyeh [i.e. Beirut’s southern suburbs] all went to traders down there, to Shatila in particular. […] Northerners […] profited from Syrian metal.” In early 2025, media reports  described residents of the marginalised northern area of Wadi Khaled, near illegal border crossings, complaining about convoys of trucks entering Syria loaded with cement, fuel, and other Lebanese goods, and returning with vegetables and scrap metal. Detection would be hard: smuggled goods are often mingled with Lebanese ones, said the anonymous source.

In the Bekaa valley, tribal networks smuggle anything that has value – weapons, drugs, and stolen goods – in collusion with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia Islamist political and military group.

The anonymous source doesn’t believe the traders who denied having dealt with Syrian smuggled metal scrap are telling the truth. Hezbollah has had longstanding ties to Assad.

“Now, after Bashar al-Assad’s fall, I’m not sure how things are – they’re still bringing in stuff and taking stuff out, but it’s not the same as it used to be,” commented the source, “back in the day, when Hezbollah was in Syria, […] if you had permission from Hezbollah, you could just walk in and out whenever the hell you wanted without even an ID.”

International sanctions made the use of ports for exports difficult in Syria, with only a handful of vessels permitted to dock, explained researcher Ayman Aldassouky. This turned Lebanon into the perfect backdoor for the regime, allowing it to save face while doing business with an enemy in war such as Turkey.

Scrap iron and steel are Lebanon’s fourth largest export. UN Comtrade statistics show that over 2 million tons of iron scrap have left Lebanese ports headed to Turkey since 2013. Part of this may have consisted of re-exports from areas under the Assad regime’s control in Syria. The main customers of Syrian scrap exported through Lebanon were reportedly Turkey, India, and the United Arab Emirates, Ayman Aldassouky told TNA.

The other part comes from local production. Here too, waste pickers are often minors, many are Syrians. After Israel’s latest war on Lebanon, districts hit by airstrikes are also turning into a source of scrap, according to locals we talked to and media reports. With no active steel recycling mills in the country, a large part of this locally collected scrap is recycled in Turkey.

The Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade did not provide comment to TNA in time for publication.

Scrap fleet

Iskenderun, southeast Turkey, is a city tailored to industry: the outer roads are jammed with trucks, factories and their piers flank the highway, and a smoky chimney is always fixed on the horizon. Here, bulk ships carrying scrap from war-torn countries have been docking at the steel companies’ private piers for years.

In the Turkish companies’ furnaces, where a soup of metals and alloys is cooked at around 1,600 °C, the trail of the iron scrap’s origins melts away. Turkey’s finished steel ends up all around the world. Major destinations include Spain, Greece, Italy and Romania, but also Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, and Iraq.

Based on data provided by MarineTraffic, a ship tracking and maritime analytics provider, TNA analysed tens of thousands of entries for bulk carriers docking at Turkey’s various ports. As none of the governments of the countries involved in this business would grant us detailed access to customs and trade data, we verified their cargo through satellite images obtained through Maxar and Planet. We could verify at least forty ships in 2023 alone: not only scrap-loaded ships sailing from Lebanon, but also vessels departing from ports in Libya, Russia, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. In most of these countries, Turkish companies purchased scrap metal from both parties to the conflict.

What we identified is likely to be only the tip of this unknown trade, a fraction of the number of vessels whose tainted cargoes help bankroll conflict internationally.

Libya: rebuilding an army ‘scrap by scrap’ 

Following the toppling of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, Libya has been mired in conflict for around a decade. Despite the signing of a fragile ceasefire agreement in 2020, the country remains politically and militarily torn between two competing powers: the UN-recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) in the west and the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in the east.

In mid-April 2023, a bulk carrier going by the name Nezha, approached the port of Benghazi in eastern Libya to fill its cargo with scrap. Two weeks later, it would unload the scrap at the Iskenderun pier of US-sanctioned MMK Metalurji, the Turkish subsidiary of Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, a Russian steel manufacturer that ranks among the largest in the world. The Nezha was previously identified as having violated EU, US, and UK sanctions by docking at ports in Russian-occupied Crimea in 2019 and subsequently had its license revoked.

We sought comment from MMK Metalurji but received no response in time for publication.

In the last decade alone, Turkey imported over 3 million tons of scrap steel from Libya, according to UN Comtrade data – more than even petroleum.

Although official data do not specify which of the two rival authorities the exports derive from, satellite images show that in recent years one of the most active ports for loading scrap has been Benghazi, in Haftar’s zone of control – a confirmation of Turkey’s most recent rapprochement with the rulers of eastern Libya. All the while, Ankara continues to support the GNU in the west, both militarily and politically.

According to human rights’ groups and the UN, forces under Haftar’s control have committed “horrific crimes” – including torture, sexual violence, and forced labour – against Libyans and migrants alike. Forces under the GNU command have likewise been accused of gross human rights violations.

Experts highlight that scrap metal export revenues have helped fund the rearmament of General Haftar’s forces, as they fight against their rivals in the west of the country.

“They started […] in the mid-2010s. Haftar used the money from the scrap to rebuild his army. Used the scrap from war-devastated Benghazi. Then even when Turkey intervened against Haftar, [he] still continued selling his scrap to Turkey,” said Tarek Megerisi, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Despite a Libyan ban on scrap exports, imposed to support domestic steel production, cargoes of steel waste continue sailing from all ports.

TNA reached out to the LNA as well as longtime spokesperson Lt Col Ahmed al-Mesmari for comment but they declined to respond.

All the ships loaded with metal scrap sailing from ports in Ukraine, Russia, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and Libya that this investigation was able to identify, bear the risk of being associated with conflict financing and human rights violations.

European and Turkish companies downstream the supply of this trade cannot erase this risk either, explained Racionero Gomez from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. Directives from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and UN guiding principles set important benchmarks for companies, but even if corporate policies align with them, “their requirements and stringency vary a lot and one cannot fully trust standards blindly,” said Racionero Gomez, “we need to remember that the duty to protect human rights is on states, so we need regulations as well. We shouldn’t just put all the emphasis on standards.”

Rubble and mortar rounds with no end in sight

That day, Basel and Ahmad’s workday ended early – the sun was already setting over their rubble realm. They spent the remaining hours lingering unpredictably, waiting for the middlemen’s truck to come and pick up the scrap. But the truck would never come; the adults hid the bounty in a big hole, trusting no one would steal it before their return tomorrow.

All of them had small red veins in their eyes. From the 35-degree September sun, from the haze of dust rising from the rubble, or perhaps from the black smoke billowing from the bonfire lit to strip the plastic insulation from copper wires. “They’re more valuable like that,” they explained.

“Are there bombs here?”

“There’s plenty,” Ahmad quickly replied. He wanted to show us one, but we convinced him to desist. His uncle was digging and a rocket exploded on him, the families would later tell us.

Buyers would pay less for scrap originating from war zones, as there might be a chance that bombs and ammunition would show up in their load during inspections at border checks. There is no cheaper scrap than the Syrian one.

Our presence agitated the two kids. In the deserted yard shadowed by once-lively apartment complexes in a suburb of Damascus, they started playing with the shell of an improvised explosive device. With a twist of his arm, Basel threw it in a perfect arc two metres away, back into the rubble where it came from. Earlier that day, standing over a pile of rubble as kings, Basel and Ahmad had claimed proudly that they knew how to stay safe from war’s leftovers.

Assad or not, their lives haven’t changed much. They had been coming here since they were five or six, almost every day from dawn till dusk.

Ever since the HTS-led government has taken over, many of the men of Assad, involved in the scrap metal monopoly, have fled; some of them made deals with the new ruling forces and were reintegrated. The offices of the Syrian Minerals and Investment Company are open again, nestled in the industrial city of Adra. TNA contacted the company, seeking comment on their activities under the Assad regime and on whether scrap-related controls were introduced under the new administration. We received no response in time for publication.

Last June, the new rulers in Damascus imposed an export ban on scrap metal – now valuable for the country’s reconstruction – though it’s hard to say whether it will be respected: provisional statistics for 2025 reveal that minor exports of scrap have continued until a few months ago.

When contacted for comment, Syria’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour directed TNA to regional directorates for further information. Neither the Syrian Ministry of Finance nor the General Customs Directorate replied to our request for comment.

The people managing the scrap trade in Syria may change; Ahmad, Basel and their families will not. Tomorrow, they will still be here, together with the unexploded munitions, the broken cement, and the scrap for which they are paid only 500 Syrian pounds per kilo.

The post Metal scrap sourced from Syria and Libya’s wars fuel Turkey’s steel industry appeared first on SIRAJ.