“The corpses the officers had marked we would later dig up and hand back to them. They would ask the victims’ families for $1,500 to $3,000 per body.”

Syria’s Sinister yet Lucrative Trade in Dead Bodies, Anwar al-Muhammad was wandering around the garbage dump like he had done for years, looking for anything of value that could be traded or sold, when he suddenly smelt a strange smell. It was moldy mixed with the reek of flesh. At first he thought it was a dead dog.

What the 35-year-old garbage collector found instead in the landfill in the village of Hadath east of Aleppo would turn his life upside down, and turn him into a very rich man.

As it turned out, the smell emanated from the partly decomposed body of someone recently liquidated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).“If it were not for the remains of God’s creation, I would not have been able to build my house on the land I inherited from my father,” said Anwar pointing at his home. “Look, it has a courtyard and stone fences. And I have planted olive seedlings.” Having dug a hole next to the dump Anwar buried what was left of the corpse. He feared leaving it out in the open might attract stray dogs. This was in August 2014.

Like most people in the region, Anwar did not know why ISIS killed these people and dumped their bodies the way they did. Yet, on the foreheads of most of the bodies ISIS fighters had written in blue or black “infidel” or “apostate.”

After the first corpse had been dumped, many others followed,” Anwar explained. “Most bodies had ropes around their feet, hands or necks. Initially, the ISIS fighters warned me that if I were to recognize a body and contact the family, my place would be among the dead.”

Like most people in the region, Anwar did not know why ISIS killed these people and dumped their bodies the way they did. Yet, on the foreheads of most of the bodies ISIS fighters had written in blue or black “infidel” or “apostate.”

ISIS used to throw bodies in wells, dry streams or river beds and garbage dumps, according to reports issued by both local and international human rights organizations.

Anwar gradually became aware that the bodies had a value and price, as some point he started selling them to the victims’ relatives. “That’s how I made the money I would never have made just working in a landfill,” he said.

13th Century Fatwa

From 2013 to 2015, more than 20 mass graves were found across Syria, containing thousands of bodies. One of the most famous places where ISIS used to dump its victims is the 50-meter deep Al-Hota pit, located some 85 kilometers from the northern city of Raqqa.

“The Al Hota gorge was once a beautiful natural site,” said Syrian researcher Sarah Kayyali in Into The Abyss, a report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in May last year. “It became a place for terror and punishment.”

During our 18-month investigation in Syria and neighboring countries, we did many interviews and obtained photographs confirming the trade in dead bodies. We tracked four cases in different geographical areas to ensure there is a pattern to the trade which has made some individuals involved in the conflict very rich indeed.

In the governorates of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa and the countryside of Aleppo, ISIS did not give the bodies to the families, based on a fatwa issued by the 13th century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, which states it is forbidden to bury an “apostate” in a Muslim cemetery. And so ISIS threw them in wells, dumps and large pits instead.

In 2015, one family was searching the dumps in the countryside north of Allepo for the body of their son, who had been killed by ISIS for “dealing with foreign parties.”The family met Anwar and offered him $7,000 for finding their son, after they had been told his body was thrown onto a village dump. They even told Anwar not to worry “if the corpse were decayed, for they could still recognize it from the teeth.”

Anwar told the ISIS fighters who regularly came to the dump to throw bodies about the family looking for their son. They demanded $10,000 for the body. Anwar would get a commission of 100,000 Syrian pounds.

8,143 People Still Missing

“The Islamic State’s (ISIS) expansion in Iraq and Syria featured horrendous public abuses,” HRW stated in its report Kidnapped By ISIS, which was issued in February 2019. “Largely unseen but equally egregious were the widespread detentions and kidnappings – thousands of people snatched from their homes and cars and at checkpoints, who subsequently went missing.”

While the full scale of the missing is not known, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has reported more than 8,143 cases of individuals detained by ISIS whose fates remain unknown. The majority of those taken were men. But HRW also documented the disappearances of several women.

“ISIS members would ask for money in exchange for informing families about the fate of their son,” Anwar said. “People did not bargain a lot.”

When we were researching other waste dumps in the Aleppo countryside to confirm what Anwar told us, one worker there told us: “They were throwing bodies, once or twice a day. And I also saw them take bodies from the dump.”

Yasser Al-Najjar used to work as an official for the Syrian military authorities negotiating the exchange of prisoners and dead bodies. “ISIS at times had crippling conditions in their requests,” he said in his office in Kilis in southern Turkey. “But that did not stop them from selling bodies for money. In the shadows, far away from media and cameras, anything is possible in Syria.”

SNHR director Fadel Abdul-Ghani told us how one of his teams once witnessed an exchange between the Syrian regime and opposition factions, in which the bodies of Iranian militants were handed over in return for the release of detainees.

In Damascus

A Syrian man currently living in the Swedish capital Stockholm used to work for a public funeral service in Damascus which transported bodies to cemeteries on a daily basis. At first, he refused to speak with us, but after several calls he finally agreed to give us his testimony on the condition of anonymity.

“Our assignment was to transport bodies from the Tishreen Military Hospital and the Mezzeh 601 Military Hospital to two large cemeteries in Qatifah, north of Damascus, and one in Najha, south of the capital,” he said. “The car looked like a decorated box with pictures of Bashar al-Assad on all sides, so we could pass all checkpoints.”

“Some corpses had specific numbers or signs on them, which we would bury next to the mass grave,” he continued. “The others were thrown into the mass grave, one on top of the other, and covered with sand by a bulldozer.”

“The corpses which the officers had marked, we would later take out and hand back to them,” he added, after pausing to drink a cup of water. “For each body, they demanded some $1,500 to $3,000 from the victims’ families.”

He then made us listen to audio recordings and phone messages of conversations between him and the military and security officers. He estimated the total number of bodies he contributed to selling at 125.

According to HRW, the Syrian regime arrested and forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of people. The detention centers under its control are known for the widespread and systematic use of torture, and catastrophic living conditions. According to the SNHN, there are still some 130,000 detainees in the detention centers of the Syrian regime, including 7,913 women and 3,561 children, which represents 88.5% of all detainees in Syria.

The Corpse Market

In August 2020, 30-year-old May learnt that her husband Zaid Jibril had been killed three years after his arrest by the Syrian regime’s security forces for “organizing anti-regime demonstrations.” He was buried in the Qatifah cemetery north of Damascus,May said she was forced to sell her house to be able to pay $7,000 to an officer in the Syrian security services through a local broker, who then brought her husband’s body, so she could bury it.

“I thank God I was able to obtain my husband’s body so our children can visit,” said May by Skype from a refugee camp in the northwestern state of Idlib. “Many families paid money to regime officers and brokers. Many sold everything they owned to obtain news of their loved ones.”

“Trading in corpses, mortgaging them to exchange or sell them is considered a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” said legal expert Hussein Hamadeh.

According to him, any assault on or mutilation of corpses, leaving them in the open, not allowing them to be buried, using them as tools of political pressure or selling them violates international law. Authorities are furthermore not allowed to intentionally withhold information about those missing, given the level of anxiety and mental stress it produces for friends and families. When the person in question dies, the authorities must provide the family with information regarding the place of burial.

Five BodiesAhmed Al-Sayed’s family learnt that one of their sons had been arrested by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during their control of the city of Raqqa in October 2017.

The young man was arrested after an airstrike near the Abu Al-Hays intersection. The 34-year-old was transferred to a nearby medical center. His father told us that the family had asked all the center’s health workers about their son, but at first they could not find him.

A few days later a  military source told the family their son had been killed. Obtaining the body would cost them $10,000. “We paid the full amount to a SDF commander through a local broker and started digging near the archaeological park in Raqqa,” said Ahmed’s brother. “We found five bodies, one of which was my brother. We reburied the others in the same place, while we took my brother’s body to the family cemetery on the outskirts of Raqqa.”

We requested representatives of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, as well as the Syrian Ministry of Interior to comment on our findings, yet did not receive a response.

As soon as the burial begins, the march of Abu Al-Ward begins too. And of all others who work just like him.

The March of Abu Ward

Abu Al-Ward is a local broker in the city of Idlib. After burying some bodies, he and three young men set out to search for a corpse that someone had asked for in exchange for $3,000.

In the center of Idlib, you can see bodies entering the forensic medical center on a daily basis. They were found, or belong to people killed in mysterious circumstances. Some 75 bodies a week arrive, according to the center’s documentation office.

“There are bodies that the courts and hospitals refuse to hand over to their families, especially those known as Shabiha [gangs closely related to the Baath Party],” said Abu Al-Ward by WhatsApp. “What follows is the process of handing over the body and receiving the money.”

“The body remains in the fridge for some 15 days to a month,” said Ali Al-Taqash who works at a medical center. “Samples for DNA testing are stored to facilitate future identification.”

As soon as the burial begins, the march of Abu Al-Ward begins too. And of all others who work just like him.

The Corpse in the Well

On January 6, 2014, the family of Mohamad al-Ali (a pseudonym) managed to obtain his body, which had been thrown in a well near the town of Deir Sunbul in the Idlib countryside.

Mohamad had been kidnapped at a checkpoint of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) and was later liquidated by a gunshot to the head

“After negotiations that lasted for days, we paid a local mediator $10,000 and the SRF allowed us to extract the body from the well,” said the young man’s family.

Local activists we met in the north of Syria and Turkey said they witnessed the sale of at least five bodies between January 2012 and March 2014. Their statements were backed by photographs and videos of the negotiations and sale, which are in our possession.

Military Gains

On the road between the Jenderes border crossing and the village of Qatma north of Aleppo, we met Abu Jaafar, who used to be responsible for forensic medicine in the opposition-held areas east of Syria until late 2016.

He had witnessed the exchange of bodies between the armed opposition and the regime and pointed at another dimension of the trade, which reflected military gains in the war.

“The body of one fighter in an Iranian-backed militia was exchanged for five or six detainees alive in the prisons of the Syrian regime,” he said.

The Syrian war has witnessed countless negotiations and exchanges of bodies and prisoners between the regime and the opposition. In August 2012, the Al-Baraa Brigade in Eastern Ghouta concluded a deal with the regime to release over 2,000 detainees from Syrian prisons, in exchange for the release of 48 Iranians, most of them belonging to the military.

“Any assault on a corpse is considered a crime prohibited in international law,” said SNHN director Abdul-Ghani. “Take the The Hague Convention on respecting the laws and customs of war, which clearly stipulates a commander is responsible for all actions of people under his command, and calls for respecting the dead and preventing the remains from being despoiled.”

This investigation was carried out under supervision of the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit Siraj and edited by Mohammad Bassiki. published on DARAJ. 

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The “Brown Bear” which killed on the Iraqi border Was it really a Syrian bear?

A unified news was published lately by most of the Syrian – Iraqi media, which contains that “the Iraqi’s Security Forces has killed a stray bear at Al Ramadi city and on the Syrian – Iraqi border , after its fleeing from Syria to Iraq, due to the fierce battles between Syrian’s  Democratic Forces ” SDF” and ” Isis “.

This news have accompanied with a spreading of a pictures on the social media websites, which are demonstrated a killed brown bear laid on the land and the blood filled its face & body, and were surrounded by a group of armed soldiers with their weapons, and was said that “the Iraqi’s security forces killed the brown Syrian bear, which is endangered to extinction”.

The early Iraqi news, which posted in 29^th eve of the last October are explained that “The Ninth Regiment forces that affiliated to Al Anbar police were enabled to kill the bear “.

Three days  was passed after the incident , a media hype happened in most of the Syrian –Iraqi media from the report of killing the bear , and the media mentioned that , the posted picture is belong to “the brown Syrian bear” which it is a rare and a semi extinct , was the killed bear really of the Syrian brown bear species?

“Daraj” website investigated in corporation with “SIRAJ” Syrian Unit for Investigative Journalism” , at what was mentioned about ” killing the brown Syrian bear ” which it is threatened with extinction at Al Anbar Iraqi’s governorate before days ago, and that by tracking the temporal and spatial path for the bear ,which it is supposed to be a rare and threatened with extinction , and by intersection of the information that posted across the opened resources on internet , in addition by making an interviews with a specialized experts at the wildlife  & biology , and all of them have been doubting that the bear is Syrian and threatened with extinction .

Path and life cycle

Appearance of what supposed to be a “the brown Syrian bear “killed in Iraq, it is like a shock for experts & researchers at the wildlife, in the same time some of them doubted that this bear is originally Syrian and from a rare species.

by tracking of  the Syrian bear path which threatened with extinction and based on what were supported by the scientific & specialized research patrols, thus there are several data refuted the report that this bear is Syrian , and above of all , it is the life cycle for this bear , where it is giving birth in May and in this period it should be in hibernation status at closed areas like caves , and it is often refuses living or stability at the flat desert areas , where the necessary water & herbs for its life are not available .

We showed pictures of the killed bear on the Syrian – Iraqi border ,on Mr. Div Gharshlis , the joint president for Specialized Bears Group (IUCN Bear Specialist ) , of the united states of America , who is concerning at wildlife in Syrian , and he has a published writings about that , and he is doubts about the bear is Syrian and said ” I think that its source of Iraqi Kurdistan territory , especially that lately they are released some of the captive bears over there , and some of it killed due to its approaching  to the people “.

He  explained that, if this bear’s source from the Iraqi side, it will not be a Syrian bear.

The Iraqi researcher, Al Laith Alubaidi has agreed with Gharshlis in the wildlife, who resident in south of Iraq and concerned in the wildlife and saying:” the bear that killed at the Iraqi lands its source neither from Syria and nor of Kurdistan of Iraq also, because the numbers of bears are limited over there and the distance between Kurdistan and Al Anbar (south), so far away “.

Alubaidi explained who has done researches on bears ,that the killed bear mostly ran away from one of the local farms or domestic, to be killed later.

Alubaidi referred to that the border areas between Syria & Iraq impossible to be an incubator zones for natural bears due to that it’s a desert areas.

The Syrian – Iraqi border, which stretching along 599 km, and nearby Al Anbar Iraqi governorate ,from Syrian side the Deir Azzor governorate, and Iraq’s Kurdistan territory north, Al Hasaka Syrian governorate.

About “the Syrian brown bear”

“The Syrian brown bear” is considered one of the “brown bear’s” ancestor, in 2010 was chosen as the year’s animal, that according what was announced by the animals protection’s project in Syria “Sbana”, in corporation with Ministry of Culture during the fourth ceremony for the International Day to Animal, that in consideration that the ” Syrian brown bear” is living in Syria, and threatened with extinction.

The “Syrian bear” alongside the “Syrian Hamster”, they are both the only animals which they are carrying the name of “the Syrian” is living in Syria and threatened with extinction.

The main habitat for the Syrian brown bear is centered at the mountain areas especially at Series Mountains of Al Kalamun and mountains of eastern Lebanon, in addition highlands of Al Rammoun  & Al Julan in south of Syria , and most ancestries of the bears are origin at Al Caucasus from  the mixing of the Syrian and Eurasian bear , but the Syrian bear is from purebred ancestry .

In year of 1969 the Syrian authorities issued a prohibition for hunting the “the Syrian bear” to protects it from extinction, especially that this is a rare animal.

And about the physical attributes, the Brown Syrian Bear head size is between 30 & 40 cm and its tall about 150 cm, and often its color is brown or gray.

The reappearance after despair

Most of the environmental life experts considered that “the Syrian brown bear” was extinct really from Syria , Lebanon & north of Palestine , especially that the last appearance of it was in 1917 , and never has been seen after that any trace of the Syrian bear , With researchers believing that it had been extinct since 1950.

According to “The Syrian Researchers ” website that there are consensus of disappearance of the bears in Syria since 50 years, but in year of 2004 , there are traces of it appeared at Snair village south of Syria , the matter which refresh hopes that it is still existed .

And the first appearance for the Syrian bear  ,was recorded at the last of 2016 ,when the night telescope monitored a video for the “Syrian bear’s “female at border mountain area  between Syria & Lebanon , in spite of that the experts were sure of its extinction.

The new appearing for “the Syrian Bear”, represents that it had enabled to live along the last fifty years and it coped on the natural circumstances, but it couldn’t cope on the war.

Div Gharshlis saying:” there are subtypes of Brown Bear, called historically (the Syrian bear) in Turkey, Syria & Iran, in addition to Caucasus Mountains in Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan”.

And according to his believe that the bears in Syria was eliminated in mid-fifties, and its trace were see little times in years of 2004,2011,2015,2016 , and he asserts that all these sights were at the west of Syria , at places nearby to Lebanon , and these traces maybe belongs to one bear .

Running away from the cage

Based about what we has monitored in Tracking traces of the killed bear which it is supposed to be from the rare “Syrian Bear’s “ancestry which is threatened with extinction, and according of witnesses & local population at the Iraqi side of the border at Al Anbar governorate & Al Ramadi city, that Iraqi civilians have seen a running away bear from Al Ramadi city towards the Euphrates River, and the its is consistent with the stories of the specialists ,that the bear’s source not from Syria and didn’t come from the Syrian lands .

The Iraqi journalist Suliman Alkubaisi, manger of “Al Anbar News” agency accredited at the Iraqi Journalists Association, he clarifies that he communicated with Iraqi security authorities, whom notified him that the bear was at one of the large farms western of Al Ramadi.

And Alkubaisi added that the security forces were anticipating to be the bear is an animal attacks the human, especially with what happened previously of attacking by a predator animals at Al Faluja & Al Ramadi , and that pushed them to shot the fire on it in “Al Taamim” area south western of Al Ramadi, before they know that it was a bear.

And he denied being the killed bear, of the “Syrian Brown bear’s” family, and that citing Iraqi security authorities.

Alkubaisi asserted that Al Anbar Environment Directorate ,went on 31 last October to “Park & Garden of Alard Alsaeeda” at Al Ramadi city, after it had made sure of the bear’s running away from that park.

And after inquiry of “Al Anabar Environment’s” team about the incident, has shown that the bear lost its children at the cage, what caused of its running away towards the another side of the city , which is controlled by the Iraqi security forces ,according to the park’s owner .

According what was cited by Alkubaisi on behalf of Al Anbar Environment’s Directorate, that the bear was going aggressively to one of the security patrols, that pushed its individuals to kill it, in referring to that the killed bear is female and its children are still existed into the park.

And through follow-up the research, we obtained a picture to the park, which the female of the bear run away of it, and which killed later and was suspected that it is a “brown Syrian bear “.

And through deny of most experts to be the bear a Syrian , is likely to be of ” the brown bear’s” family, which contains a several types ، unlike the “brown Syrian bear ” , especially that the size of the killed bear was smaller than the normal size of the brown Syrian bear , and its killing’s time is coincided with its normal hibernation throughout the winter period , in addition to concentrated of presence this kind of bears when it was existed clearly in Syria ,in south & west of country towards the Lebanese border, and it is impossible of being the bear crossed the Syrian lands from the far its west to the far of its east.

* This investigation was completed under the supervision of the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism-SIRAJ.

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