On a video call, Maryam narrates the details of her daily routine that has remained unchanged in the times of COVID-19.

She wakes up everyday at dawn before waking the rest of her family, to start preparing for work. Collectively, the family starts preparing food in large quantities sufficient for everyone.

Around 1,000 refugees live in the Ahl al Qur’an camp, and after the recent wave of displacement, the number has increased, according to the camp’s director, Muhammad Sheikh Ismail.

“Here, social distancing and preventive measures recommended by the World Health Organization and other associations are not possible,” he said.

“There are no health or service facilities in the camps, and the number of tents is simply not sufficient for the number of people. Consequently, social distancing and self-isolation is not possible.”

“In each tent (two meters wide and three meters long), there are at least five people who share food and drink, while each section (consisting of 40 tents) has a total of six toilets; three for men and three for women,” Ismail said.

Despite the ongoing threat of the virus, residents felt reassured due to the blockade imposed by the Syrian government, and the Turkish government’s closure of three land crossings: Bab al-Hawa, Safety door, and Jarablos.

Airports and other ports have also been relatively empty since the area’s first recorded case.

However, the severity of the situation evolved after July 9 when the first cases were recorded at Bab Al-Hawa hospital, specifically, in a Syrian doctor who recently moved to Turkey.

There was great fear and concern that the cases would continue to spread due to the absence of preventive measures.

A study carried out by the Medicare Health Foundation, in cooperation with the health directorates in northern Syria, set out to assess the number of potential coronavirus cases, and found that the possibility for widespread infection is extremely high if necessary precautions are not taken.

The study indicated that in the first six weeks, cases may reach up to 240,000 (which represent 20% of the internally displaced population), of which 36,000 would be severe, 12,000 would be critical and 14,328 would be fatal.

These areas mostly rely on preventive measures implemented and funded by civil societies and organizations that are already limited in their capabilities and resources.

Director of Latakia (with jurisdiction over the Ahl al-Qur’an Camp) in the Syrian Civil Defense, Muhammad Haji Asaad, sheds light on some of the preventive measures that have been implemented.

“From late April to early September we sterilized 115 camps distributed from Al-Zouf to the village of Badama, including the Ahl al Qur’an camp.

We also sterilized approximately 22 villages in the western countryside of Idlib, and targeted areas with high population densities,” he said.

Dr. Mahmoud al-Hariri, the director of the health information unit in northern Syria (including Hama, Aleppo, the Sahel and Idlib) who works directly with the WHO, told ARIJ that, “[Until September], we only had one laboratory in Idlib equipped with tools for analyzing samples.

It was proposed to equip two new laboratories; one in the city of Jarablus [northeast of Aleppo] and the second in the city of Afrin [north of Aleppo]. Some of the equipment has arrived, albeit late, and included 6,0000 analysis kits and tests, which will be activated very soon.”

Dr. Muhammad Al-Salem, director of the vaccine program and member of the Early Warning and Epidemic Response Network, says that “1,390 tests were conducted for suspected cases by the end of June, all of which were negative.”

According to Al-Salem, the lab in Idlib analyses results from various areas and is not restricted to the governorate alone. Samples collected from Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, Aleppo and Hasaka were analyzed in Idlib, he told ARIJ.

The ACU runs the only laboratory in the opposition-controlled areas of northern Syria. According to Al-Salem, the protocol for positive tests is as follows: in the event of a positive result, a second swab is taken from the potential patient and transferred to Turkey for confirmation.

The confirmation is typically provided 24 hours after the test is conducted. As for the hospitals directly supported by Turkey and located in the northern and northeastern countryside of Aleppo, samples are collected there and then sent to Turkey.

Just two days after the first COVID-19 case was recorded in opposition-controlled areas,  specifically on July 11, the Ministry of Health of Syria’s interim government announced that the number of cases had risen to three – two of which belonged to doctors working in the Azaz City Hospital who had recently entered from Turkey.

As of 23 July, the number of confirmed cases had risen to 22 out of 3,111 tested, according to Dr. M. Ram Al-Sheikh.

On September 5, the Early Warning Network announced an additional 14 recorded cases — the highest since the pandemic reached the north, bringing the total number of cases to 112.

The accelerated rate at which COVID-19 cases were being recorded, only increased fears in light of already extremely difficult living conditions.

An Exhausted Medical Sector

“Currently, Northern Syria does not have a unified health system, and only a few limited health institutions are operating at maximum capacity to fulfil the needs of more than 4 million people in an unstable and unprepared area,” says Dr. Yasser Najeeb, Executive Director of an Immunization Group in Syria.

The group consists of a medical team that provides vaccines for children under the supervision of the WHO, and is one of several working to tackle the crisis in northern Syria, with support from the WHO.

The ARIJ reporter attempted to contact Dr. Munther Khalil, the Director of the Idlib Health Directorate and responsible for coordinating medical support in the governorate, who did not respond.

Al-Salem describes the medical sector as “exhausted”.

“In northern Syria, there are only 600 doctors serving over 4 million people, a third of which live in overcrowded camps on the border with Turkey. We need at least four times the current number of doctors, and qualified laboratory technicians are very rare. Moreover, the infrastructure has been completely destroyed, and most of the hospitals currently operating are relatively rudimentary,” he told ARIJ.

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Hariri added that, “we fear there will be a great number of casualties among medical staff. As of September 8, we recorded 10 cases among the medical teams, which forced them to remain in isolation for 15 days. For us, it is a big problem for a doctor to be absent throughout this period in light of their scarcity.”

There are only 90-100 respirators available in the entire northern region of Syria, which are meant to serve 4 million people in normal conditions, excluding the pandemic and warzones. Of the total number of respirators, 80 to 85 devices are already being used around the clock, according to Al-Salem, leaving only a few devices available.

In its 2019 annual report, the Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the death of 26 medical personnel and a total of 98 attacks on medical facilities in that year alone. The attacks were also confirmed in a report by Physicians for Human Rights, which recorded 595 attempted attacks on 350 separate medical facilities, with a death toll of 923 medical workers between March 2011 and February 2020.

According to Dr. Hariri, the WHO has formed a working group, under its direct supervision, for local organizations to confront the pandemic since March.

The group operates in coordination with health directorates, and has a budget of $64 million for a period of six months.

Al-Salem also indicated that Global Health provides safety equipment for workers in the medical sector, and more is scheduled to be sent in the coming period. It has also provided both online and in person training for medical personnel.

“Only four quarantine centers were equipped out of 30. Additionally, just four out of nine hospitals were equipped according to the medical plan initially drafted by medical organizations, with the support of the WHO, to confront the virus,” Al-Salem added.

Local Organizations

According to Mustafa Al-Hassan, the Protection Coordinator at the Sadad Humanitarian organization, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) allocated $11 million to support response projects, increase hygiene in the camps and support the water and health sector.

It later announced a $75 million grant that would be allocated to organizations, subject to the OCHA’s approval, and according to their projects and plans. These funding figures have been confirmed and matched by three independent sources, but have not been published by the OCHA itself.

For Al-Hassan, “the problem is that most of the organizations working in the humanitarian field in northern Syria are not committed to pandemic prevention measures, and only a few are implementing the appropriate safety and awareness measures amongst their staff.”

Dr. Hariri insists that “no health system is capable of confronting the pandemic without a societal commitment to preventive measures, which is why it is imperative to equip hospitals and isolation centers.

For example, the cost of equipping an intensive care bed can reach up to $13,000 while the cost of a mask is less than half a dollar, and it provides a large amount of protection and largely reduces the risk of infection.”

“However,” he continued, “the majority of the public does not comply with these simple preventative measures. We have even spotted some health sector workers who are not committed to wearing masks.”

The ARIJ reporter found numerous instances of aid organizations not adhering to minimal preventative measures, such as masks.

Beyond the social media accounts of these organizations, which show staff in masks and adhering to the minimal standards, most of the fieldwork is conducted without the necessary health and safety precautions.

Director of the Maram Relief and Development Organization, Yaqzan al-Shishakli, indicated that since last April, his organization has established an isolation and quarantine center in the village of Sheikh Bahr in the countryside of Idlib.

The center provides services to those affected by COVID-19 in a well-equipped arena, to ensure that the virus is not transmitted. Al-Shishakli said that as of September 1, the center has not received a single case.

“The center has a capacity of 160 people and is designed to double its size within a week in the event of an increase in cases, to accommodate 320 people. The center also aims to relieve pressure on local hospitals and coordinates with Idlib Health so that their work is under their supervision,” Al-Shishakli told ARIJ.

Al-Shishakli confirms that his organization has provided several training sessions and workshops on safety and prevention measures, and that the organization has shifted the schools they supervise to e-learning, especially since most of the schools in northern Syria have completely shut down.

“We tried to complete the school year with our 4800 students online, and deliver all the lessons through WhatsApp. However, we faced some accessibility issues, because some families did not have access to WiFi and blackouts meant that the internet was not particularly reliable,” he added.

Chaos and Clashing Authorities

In a region dominated by chaos and lawlessness, the authorities and military organizations seek to gain from the COVID-19 crisis without considering the dangers and consequences of a virus spread.

All decisions aimed at preventing the spread of the virus and issued by the Salvation Government (loyal to the Al-Nusra Front) which manages the city of Idlib and some parts of its countryside, have been superficial, according to Muhammad Haj Hammoud.

Hammoud, a Syrian journalist and Director of the Idlib Plus network, explains how efforts by the authorities are ultimately driven by ulterior motives. Specifically, authorities aim to use this crisis to strengthen their influence “on the ground” and narrow their grip and power over civilians.

This investigation monitored a number of decisions that have effectively put civilians’ lives in danger.

For example, the decision taken on April 2 to suspend Friday prayers in mosques lasted just two weeks. This was a major issue, especially given the month of Ramadan and the increased amount of prayers in local mosques, which continued despite the ongoing crisis and in the absence of any preventative or precautionary measures.

Then, on May 31, came the decision to grant exemptions for vehicle registration fees within a period of 15 days, “with the aim of encouraging people to go back to normality”.

This resulted in citizens flocking to register their vehicles, causing severe congestion, and forcing the government to extend the initial grace period.

This also led to an increase in the risk of contracting COVID-19. Here, the authorities are criticized for attempting to “return to normality” when their interests are clearly focused on remedying the financial deficit and issues with their treasury, instead of prioritizing people’s lives and their safety.

Furthermore, no decision was issued to limit commercial or industrial activity in the governorate. Instead, the Salvation Government tried to open new crossings and trade routes, which threatened the isolation of Idlib and put it at risk of infection from neighbouring areas.

According to various sources (from the Ministry of Health and other unofficial sources), as of June, the neighboring areas had already recorded at least 204 cases. This is despite numerous warnings from the Doctors’ Union in Northern Syria regarding the dangers of opening these crossings.

On April 15, the Headquarters for the “Liberation of Al-Sham” announced the opening of a commercial crossing with areas near the city of Saraqib, due to pressure from the business owners and traders trying to compensate for their losses after the crossings with Turkey were closed. However, the authorities stood to gain from taxes imposed on all vehicles using the crossing, in either direction.

Demonstrations quickly spread in northern Syria, and several popular parties issued statements rejecting the decision and demanding that the crossing be closed. In response to the protests, the authorities simply opened a crossing in a different area in the western countryside of Aleppo on April 30.

Tahrir al-Sham published a video of the crossing’s activities and the entry of trucks from regime-controlled areas. Once again, the people protested by organizing a sit-in to express their opposition to the authorities’ decision. However, the authorities retaliated by shooting at protestors, killing some.

A worker in a local organization speaking on the condition of anonymity, indicates that “the most dangerous thing for humanitarian organizations operating in the northern regions is the interference of the Government through the Office of the Displaced Administration and the Office of Organizations Affairs.

It would be impossible for an organization to operate in those areas or in the camps without their approval, and obstructing these organizations prevents aid from reaching those who need it.”

Due to deteriorating economic conditions, the collapse of the Syrian currency, the threat of the pandemic, and the implementation of the Caesar Act, the suffering and needs of civilians have increased, thereby increasing their dependence on relief and humanitarian organizations.

Ahmed Abdel Hakim, a displaced person who lives in a camp on the Syrian-Turkish border in the western countryside of Idlib, explains how the aid he receives is crucial in sustaining him and his family.

He told ARIJ that if the aid provided to him is cut for just one month, he and his family face starvation and food insecurity, as he is unemployed and without a source of income.

On July 11, after great difficulty, the UN Security Council voted on Resolution No. 2533, which stipulates the renewal of the mechanism for the introduction of cross-border humanitarian aid, specifically through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing that connects northern Syria and Turkey, for a period of one year.

The resolution also called on the UN Secretary General to submit their report on the functioning and progress of the aforementioned mechanism to the Security Council at least once every 60 days.

This investigation was completed with support of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ).

SIRAJ —Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism

The post COVID-19: A Ticking Time Bomb in Northern Syria and its Refugee Camps appeared first on SIRAJ.

Mohammad Bassiki – Ali Al Ibrahim – Chafak Kojak

Over a period of a year and two months, Noor (a pseudonym), a Syrian woman from the city of Douma – a formerly rebel-held suburb of Damascus – wrestled with the struggles of imprisonment in an Assad regime prison – “Branch 227” – in the center of Damascus, along with her husband and two newborn babies.

Noor’s ordeal began in April 2013, when a government patrol near the Al-Mezzah highway stopped their car on their way back from Jordan. The entire family was arrested while attempting to return to their hometown of Douma, which at the time was besieged by regime forces.

Noor recalls the events of that fateful afternoon and the beginning of her ordeal: “We had only been on the highway for a few minutes, when a police car started pursuing us… they started shooting at our car until it stopped. The driver ran away and hid amongst the orchards, but we weren’t able to run for long. I was tired from giving birth, and I had my children with me, so we were arrested.”

Noor continues: “When they took us into the [state] security branch, they started to threaten to take my children away from me, because ‘I did not deserve them and because I was a terrorist.’ I felt like I was on the verge of collapse every time they made that threat. I had a bottle of milk for my daughter in my bag, but my son was so scared he couldn’t breastfeed. I think the milk dried up in my chest, so I gave him a sedative until he slept while he was crying from hunger.”

Yet this episode would not qualify as the most painful experience that Noor and her family would be subjected to – for she could not envisage what would happen to them following the fifth day of their imprisonment.

“After five days in prison” Noor recounts, “an officer suddenly entered the cell and took my daughter. I started pulling her back from his hand and so he hit me on the face. I fell to the ground and he took her. I heard the sound of her cries as they put her in the car, and then he returned to take my son. I asked him only to allow me to feed him, but he refused… I suffered a complete breakdown. They took my children and I became fully convinced that I would never see them again, and that I would never leave this place. I entered a state of complete despair, there was no life left in me.”

The arrest of children under the age of eighteen, the deprivation of their freedom and their torture, has left an indelible mark on the fabric of Syrian society, in addition to the open wound that remains in the psyches of both the children and their parents. Indeed, it should be remembered that it was the arrest of children in the southern province of Dara’a by security forces in March 2011 that sparked the outbreak of protests across the country, which would soon transform into a devastating conflict which would result in the deaths of more than half a million Syrians.

According to the many testimonies and accounts reported by rights activists, the families of detainees as well as former security and police personnel, the arrest of Syrian children under various pretexts has been a mainstay of the Syrian war and continues up to the present day – whether due to their participation in protests, simply accompanying their parents when travelling and passing through military checkpoints, or when passing from regime-held areas to those of the opposition and vice versa.

According to such testimonies, the imprisonment of children has become a widely-practiced and normalized mode of conduct amongst regime security forces, intended to “render families subservient and pressure them, and create an atmosphere of fear” – in the words of Ahmed Qashit, a defected regime officer who previously served as an investigator in Damascus, and who witnessed many cases of children being arrested in Aleppo following their participation in protests.

This reality has prompted many calls for investigation. Over three months, a SIRAJ working group unearthed the cases of 23 names of children detained in government prisons on unclear grounds, after having conducted a series of direct interviews with the families and relatives of the detainees, in addition to examining the meticulous documentation carried out by both Syrian and international specialized monitors. Amongst these detainees are some who have been released, while the fate of others remains unknown.

Within the sample brought to light in SIRAJ’s investigation, these include children who had been arrested along with their parents or only their mothers between the period of April 2012 and May 2019; 17 males and six females, all under the age of eighteen. This is both in stark violation of international law (the Convention on the Rights of the Child) as well being in contravention of the Syrian constitution.

It should be noted that the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into effect on the 2nd of September 1990 and was ratified by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 44/25, defines a child as “every person who has not exceeded the age of eighteen, provided they had not reached the age of majority beforehand as defined by applicable law.”

In June 1993, Syria ratified the Convention according to Law No.8 of that year, and the Convention subsequently came into force on the 14th of August 1993 – though with reservations regarding Articles 20 and 21 of the Convention (related to adoption) and Article 14, which stipulates a child’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Additionally, Syria also ratified two optional protocols annexed to the Convention, pertaining to the selling of children and their embroilment in acts of prostitution, pornography and armed conflict – as per Decree No.379 issued on the 26th of October 2002.

“My son was so scared he couldn’t breastfeed, I think the milk dried up in my chest. I gave him a sedative until he slept as he cried from hunger”, Noor a Syrian woman testifies about systemic torture in Syria’s Branch 227 Intelligence Cell

According to Mishal Shamas, a lawyer and member of the Committee for the Defense of Prisoners of Thought in Syria: “I personally witnessed the arrest of a number of children by the Syrian intelligence services [mukhabarat], and defended some of them in the Terrorism Court. In 2013 I represented a fourteen year-old boy from the Al-Midan neighborhood of Damascus. He was detained by the military police, and instead of sending him to court for his interrogation, a medical report was sent reporting that he had died in prison – with the alleged pretext being that he suffered a heart attack.”

Meanwhile, Samer Mansour, a public investigator serving in the central Syrian city of Hama, before defecting from the security corps in 2015, tells SIRAJ: “Children used to be arrested because of graffiti on walls, or for throwing rocks at security and police cars. This served as a pressure tool against the families, to try and get them to disclose the identities of older protesters. These were vacuous excuses whose real aim was to pressure the people.”

On the road

Over a period of 22 days, Mohammed (a pseudonym), a child from the city of Hama, was detained with his mother in the dungeons of a state security branch in the city of Aleppo.

Mohammed was arrested on the 23rd of May 2019, when he was travelling with his mother from the city of Hama to Al-Bab in the northern countryside of Aleppo, the latter remains under the control of the Syrian opposition. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), which closely followed the cases of detained children, informed SIRAJ that Mohammed was fortunately released later.

Yet Mohammed’s counterpart from the same province of Hama, Yasser (also a pseudonym for safety reasons), did not share the former’s luck. He was arrested in 2012 and has still not been released, and to this day, his family have no information about his whereabouts or situation.

Sixteen year-old Yasser disappeared on the 10th of July 2012, after passing through a government checkpoint at Al-Mabtin east of the city of Hama. Yasser had been returning with his father from the city to his village.

Yasser’s brother, who refused to divulge his name for security reasons, spoke of the family’s suffering which began the moment of his brother and father’s arrest, and continues to this day. Like so many others, the fate of his brother and father remains unknown, with the last piece of information that the family received being that Yasser had been moved to Deir Shamil, near the city of Masyaf west of Hama.

Deir Shamil had previously served as a military camp for ‘vanguard’ (child) soldiers, before being transformed by the regime into a detention camp. Witnesses and survivors released from Deir Shamil informed Yasser’s brother that they “heard the voices of his brother being tortured in the adjacent cell.”

Despite remaining in the dark about Yasser’s fate, the brother’s attempts to uncover the fate of his sibling and that of his father have continued relentlessly – but to little avail. He says: “In the middle of 2014, a detainee was released from Sednaya prison, he told me that he saw my brother and father in the prison. Then in October 2017, I met a detainee from the village of Hawa in the southern countryside of Idlib, and he knew my dad and brother, and said that he had seen them in Adra prison (Damascus Central Prison).”

According to a 2016 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW): “Out of approximately 215,000 detainees held by the regime, there are no less than 1,400 children detained between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, while some defectors and witnesses have reported that there are detained children no older than eight years-old.”

HRW also noted in a 2015 report that it had verified the deaths of detainees held in places of detention, amongst them two children, one of whom was fourteen at the time of his arrest.

Under the roof of a prison cell

Despite her release, Noor is unable to escape the memory of those moments when she was forcibly imprisoned under the same ceiling with her son of only two months of age and year-old daughter. Yet even that harrowing experience paled in comparison with how her children would subsequently be wrested away from her possession, forcibly taken to a place unknown to her and which her jailors refused to divulge.

Noor recalls her feeling of helplessness when faced with such an unenviable situation: how could she answer a breastfeeding child’s cries for milk that she could not provide, and what does she tell her daughter who only wants to walk and play?

Noor recalls: “Me and the two children were in a room, and my husband in the cell. They took me into the interrogation room and they [the children] were crying form hunger. The interrogator told me to silence them, but my son would not, as it had been a long time since he had been fed.”

Noor adds that after the officer took her children away, she was moved to another room, and was placed with other women detainees where she would spend the majority of her imprisonment (a year and two months) at Branch 227.

A UN report read: “Syrian children were tortured and beaten with metal cables, whips, wooden sticks and electric shocks, [directed] even at their reproductive organs – in addition to having their nails ripped off, as well as the use of sexual violence.”

According to a report by the Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC), Branch 227, under the jurisdiction of the regime’s ‘military security’, is notorious for being “responsible for thousands of cases of arbitrary detention, forced disappearances and mass killing of dozens of detainees under torture since the beginning of the Syrian revolution.”

For its part, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) – a Syrian Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) – extensively monitors violations taking place in the conflict. Going far beyond the discovery of child detainees in regime prisons, a SNHR report published in June 2019 on arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances in government detention centers, documented the killing of 177 children by torture, in what it described as a “crime of extermination.”

According to the head of SNHR, Fadel Abdel Ghani: “The regime has approximately 3,500 child detainees, with the majority forcibly disappeared with their parents knowing nothing about them.”

Indeed, Noor’s testimony affirms this reality, telling SIRAJ that “after three months of crying and asking the interrogators about her children, after they took them from her, the interrogator finally confessed that they held the children and did not hand them over to her family.”

Furthermore, in a 2016 report titled “Out of sight, out of mind”, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria (subordinate to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR) revealed the death of children as young as the age of seven under detention by the Syrian regime.

According to Abdel Ghani, the abuses committed by the regime against both the young and the adults are replicated against children – a demonstration of the regime’s failure and unwillingness to differentiate in the treatment of young or old, or provide an exception for children to be spared from the torture, killing and sexual violence practiced on their older counterparts.

Arrested for the guilt of others

Now in her forties, ‘Um Sha’ban’ – originally from the countryside of Damascus – today resides in a refugee camp near the city of Al-Bab north of Aleppo, having fled the capital with her three children, including fourteen-year old Yousef, who was detained for a year and three months after being arrested at a Syrian regime checkpoint in Damascus.

Yousef was arrested by the Al-Khatib security branch (‘Number 251’) in April 2012; he was seized because his father had joined the Free Syrian Army. The regime offered to release Yousef if his father surrendered himself – which he did a month later.

However, according to Um Sha’ban: “Despite my husband surrendering, Yousef remained in detention for a year and three months, and then was released.”

Hoping to understand the rationale underpinning a government arresting a child citizen because of the ‘guilt’ of their family, the team of experts and rights activists that we interviewed in the conduct of this investigation unanimously agreed that that the imprisonment of children in Syrian regime cells was primarily motivated by the aim of subjugating families who were known for adopting political positions against the regime, and ‘bringing them to kneel’.

The conduct of official Syrian regime authorities carried out via its security and military apparatuses, is a clear contravention of the second article (clause two) of the 1990 Convention on the Protection of the Child, which stipulates a child’s right to be protected from every form of discrimination or punishment derived from activities, expressed opinions or positions held by their parents.

Indeed, the regime’s arrest of children as a ‘pressure tool’ against families also violates its own constitution which was passed in 2012, specifically Article 20 which declares: “The state protects marriage and encourages it, and works to remove financial and social obstacles that hinder it; [the state] protects motherhood and childhood, nurtures [youth] development and young adults, and provides them with the appropriate circumstances to develop their talents.”

Meanwhile, the defected former investigator Ahmed Qashit adds: “The situation was [one of] crying and fear: I saw a child being hit with a cable on his back because he wrote slogans on a wall.” Qashit reaffirms that the purpose of this policy is to “pressure families and the population in general by abusing the young before [yet alone] the old; it was a matter of [official] policy, and instructions came from several ministries [ordering] for the use of repression.”

A seventeen year-old girl

With the Syrian regime having throughout the war adopted a policy of equal treatment for both sexes. Noor says she witnessed a number of female detainees under the age of eighteen, in addition to children of various ages. In her same cell, she noted, was a lady with three girls under the age of five.

“I saw a girl who was seventeen years-old and was diabetic” Noor recalls. “She suffered a psychological shock, and her diabetes deteriorated. When they took her to the hospital they refused to let her mother accompany her. She stayed there for three days, and when she returned she was in a state of shock. She didn’t eat or talk, and remained with her mother for twenty days before they left… I don’t know if that was to another [prison] branch or if they were released.”

Noor’s account is reinforced and corroborated by such detailed reports as that released by Amnesty International in 2016, titled “It breaks the human”, which affirmed that most former female prisoners had witnessed children in detention centers, including those who were being detained with their mothers.

As mentioned, children are not only detained in inhumane conditions, but are also subject to torture – as reported by human rights groups and as declared by a detailed investigation published in 2014 by the United Nations Secretary-General to the UN Security Council (UNSC).

The UN investigation concluded that children were arrested at various places, from checkpoints to homes, schools, roads and hospitals, notably in the provinces of Dara’a, Idlib, Homs, Deir al-Zor. The report stated that the majority of the detained children were held in the same detention cells as adults, while adding that children as young as the age of eleven were subject to severe mistreatment, including torture, in order to extract confessions, humiliate them, or pressure their relatives to surrender themselves or confess to alleged crimes.

The UN report read: “Children were tortured and beaten with metal cables, whips, wooden sticks and electric shocks, [directed] even at their reproductive organs – in addition to having their nails ripped off, as well as the use of sexual violence.”

The imprisonment of children has become a widely-practiced and normalised mode of conduct amongst Syria’s security forces for its effectiveness in “rendering families subservient and creating an atmosphere of fear”, Ahmed Qashit, a defected officer states.

In a statement made to the Syrian website Zaman al-Wasl, the General Secretary of the ‘Syria Justice Gathering’, Judge Mohammed Noor Hamidi, declares: “International law forbids warring parties from deploying sexual violence against children, and governments must pursue all of those who violate these agreements, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the supplementary first and second protocols, as well as the conventional laws that operate in all conflicts.”

Hamidi adds that “sexual violence is amongst the most heinous of human rights violations [practiced] by the regime, and many cases have been documented in regime security branches that practices sexual violence against children and women in order to force them to confess to crimes that they did not commit.”

According to Qashit: “We saw children being transported in police cars, ranging between the ages of seven and ten, being physically restricted and sprayed with gases, beaten with plastic parts, and their hands placed in metal restraints before being taken for investigation.” He adds: “The children were subjected to all forms of torture, including beatings on the back and stomach, until they were placed in isolation cells. They frightened them, telling them things that were not suitable for their age.”

Children in Sednaya

Since the fifth of January 2013, the parents of five children from the village of Tesneen in the northern countryside in Homs have remained oblivious to the fate of their children, after they were arrested and forcibly disappeared following an incursion into the village by pro-government forces and allied militias. Tesneen had a population of four thousands residents, and has witnessed the killing of 105 individuals, including women, children and elderly – in addition to the arrest of a large number of locals, including the aforementioned children whose ages ranged between ten and thirteen.

One family source who was witness to the events speaks of the family’s continued daily suffering, especially the parents, who remain in the dark about the whereabouts of their detained children, despite their continued unremitting search. However, some information has emerged suggesting that they may be held in the infamous Sednaya prison of Damascus.

According to the family source, who spoke to SIRAJ on the condition of anonymity: “We tried a lot… the search is continuing in the chance that we discover a glimmer of hope. We tried to get in touch with anyone who was released from the regime’s jails, and we appointed lawyers, but to no avail.”

Undoubtedly, the most haunting question relentlessly circling in the minds of the family is whether their children are still being held in the Syrian regime’s prisons, or whether they may have been executed. The family source has asked himself the same question, and answers: “Their disappearance amidst a complete lack of knowledge about what has happened to them has left us in a state of anguish and pain, to the extent that some mothers have been unable to internalize what has happened, and have succumbed to psychological illnesses.”

Life after imprisonment

The Tesneen family source’s details of the suffering of children’s family is bolstered by the account given by Taher Laila of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), where he works as a team leader for psychological and social support. In conversation with SIRAJ, Laila spoke of the psychological difficulties incurred by child detainees in the aftermath of their experience, stating: “The experience of imprisonment is difficult, not least because a child’s psychological make-up is more fragile than that of an adult, meaning that the impact is deeper.”

Laila details some of the psychological and social aftereffects which child detainees are left with: “[Imprisonment] causes the child anxiety, depression and isolation; their social relationships with those around them can be damaged and become dysfunctional. Furthermore, the child can suffer post-shock trauma, whereby images of the experiences they encountered can be repeatedly evoked, which can affect their sleep and functionality in all aspects of life.”

Such a diagnosis accurately describes the experience suffered by Noor’s two children, after the family was released following a year-long imprisonment as a result of a prisoner exchange between the rebel faction Jaish al-Islam and the Syrian regime. On her release, Noor’s now-two year-old daughter “could not reacclimatize with those around her, and was always crying.”

Noor expands: “My family used to [affectionately] tell her ‘your uncle is coming soon to take you for a trip!’, but she’d cry more and scream. Later my family discovered that she was afraid of the word ‘uncle’, and they found cigarette burn marks on her feet. Perhaps there was someone in the prison who scared her who was called ‘uncle’, and for a long time she remained afraid of that word.”

According to Noor, her daughter started to fear all men – to the extent that any time a relative tried to carry her she would become terror-stricken. Twenty days after her release, she recognized her mother, but was initially too afraid of getting close to her father.

Blaming oneself

On the other hand, another widely-reported psychological phenomenon in former child detainees is the feeling of self-guilt, whereby it has been found that the detained children later develop a strong propensity to blame themselves for their experience. Um Sha’aban’s son, Youssef, was one such obvious example – after his imprisonment forced his rebel father to surrender himself to the Syrian regime in exchange for his son’s release.

According to Um Sha’aban: “Until today, Youssef still lives in a state of fear, isolation, anxiety and difficult sleeping as a result of the violence he witnessed, in addition to his feeling of guilt for the arrest of his father – not to mention our displacement from our hometown towards North Syria.”

On this point, Laila remarks: “When they [the children] are interrogated, they can offer information that harms other people, and so they blame themselves and feel a strong sense of guilt. In such cases, the child must be referred to a psychiatrist or expert social worker to help them.”

On the prospects of criminal accountability

When questioned on whether it is likely for the criminals complicit in the abuse of children to be held to account, Mishal Shamas refers to the 1989 Convention on the Right of the Child ratified by Syria, which forbade the torture, ill-treatment and harsh, inhumane and degrading punishment of children. All parties to the Convention pledged to respect the bases of International Law applicable to armed conflicts and relating to children.

Ultimately, despite the many obstacles which Syrians today face in the way of attaining justice and accountability, Shamas affirms the continued paramount importance for Syrian human rights groups to “intensify their efforts and continue to pursue the perpetrators of war crimes, torture and crimes against humanity in Syria, in accordance with the international judicial jurisdiction which is currently available in four European countries: namely Germany, Sweden, Austria and Norway.”

Shamas concludes: “This jurisdiction obligates the member states which are parties to international treaties to hold the perpetrators of such abuses accountable – even if those who violated the terms of those agreements were not on its territory – for perpetrating war crimes as per the Geneva conventions and conventional law. It is the right of those children to see the perpetrators brought to justice, and to obtain a suitable compensation for the crimes committed against them, as well as guarantees that such crimes would not be repeated in the future.”

This Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ) investigation was conducted in cooperation with and Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) – and with support from Free Press Unlimited. Published on Raseef22

The post “They were subjected to all forms of torture”… The Systemic Jailing of Syrian Children appeared first on SIRAJ.

Two kilometers of the Turkish-Syrian border, Yusuf entered into an old house located at Reyhanlı suburbs – south of Turkey, opened carefully a brown big canvas bag and take out slowly a heavy stone inside it to avoid breaking it.

When he lifts the stone, I saw a human portrait was carved carefully on a white stone, with big eyes, beard and curly hair’s head.

After the man removed the bag fully, an athletic naked body was appeared of pure marble, standing leaning on a column covered with the skin of a dead lion.

“What a beautiful statue!” Yusuf said with a smile while staring on it, it is from Syria with a half meter height, made of greenish stone, “it will change my life and make me a rich person “as Yusuf said to the investigator.

That just has entered from Syria by Yusuf , hoping to make him rich , this is what motivate us to search more against the backgrounds of transferring, smuggling of Syrian archaeology and selling it, especially after spread of excavation & illegal trade inside the country, and Crossing borders to neighboring countries, which has accompanied the war-years since 8 years, thus the Syrian bleeding was not limited to immigration of millions people from the country but exceeded it to smuggling stones (archaeology).

The smuggled archeology trading networks are getting benefit by selling ,purchasing  and smuggling it to the neighboring countries, which include multiple parties of normal citizens, brokers & traders , who were founded by a virtual environment-Social Media for trading of such goods by advertising and selling it.

Four months of tracking, a team of journalists in this investigation has detected the way of merchandising the Syrian smuggled archaeology by using Social Media to create a demand on such goods, as Yusuf did, and to support selling operations, where you can find who sells the archaeology pieces and who interested of purchasing it.

And you can find details of the exhibited pieces, price list, delivery method and others, and what led us to achieve this investigation to know how they are trafficking of such archaeology? Who buy them? Where can you find their last place?

No official statistics for the amount of smuggled & stole Syrian archaeology in the last few years, or which crossed the border by smugglers, mediators and border’ traders, the international “UNICCO” organization’s estimates are considered the illegal trading of the cultural properties from Syria & Iraq are one of the main income resources for organized crime (its income estimated between 7 & 15 billion dollar yearly).

On 13 February 2019, the Turkish police announced seizure of four – “priceless” old books, were written by the Syriac & Aramiac language included a book depicts the life of Jesus Christ, and the police think the books may were smuggled from Syria museums, but after examining the books later has showed no stamps on it refer to its registration, and some parts of the books were torn, that mean it was containing museum archive’s numbers which was stolen from.

Before that /168/ of Syrian smuggled archaeology pieces were seizure by the authorities, dating back to Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman era at Gaziantep province.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning in 2015 against the background of growth the Syrian archaeology trading due to the conflict, and referred that Syrian stolen archaeology are sold in the European black markets.

Thus an alternatives were found, most of selling archaeology & antiques’ transactions are currently done by limited networks or by Social Media including Facebook, instant messaging by using WhatsApp and Telegram apps.

eBay website is showing pictures for Syrian originally antiques with different prices, and by technology the network reaches to potential purchasers with more security and anonymity, what is proven by this investigation.

“The most famous areas for smuggling the archaeology to the neighboring countries & world are the big archaeological areas, like Palmyra city (2100 B.C), Afamia city – Hama countryside (300 B.C).Forgotten Cities in Idleb like: Sergila, Bara and citadel of Samaan which it’s dating back to Byzantine era.” According to Ex-Director of Archeology and Museums in Al-raqqa city, Prof. Anas Al-khabour, who worked in Alraqqa city between2003-2008 and living in Sweden currently, professor in Gothenburg University, Specialist in the cultural threatened heritage in conflicts areas like Syria & Iraq.

Where do the archaeologies come from?

Yusuf -35 years old, with a big body & light beard on his corny face, was exhibiting some archeological pieces like: Golden currencies & Romanian glass bottles on his “Facebook” page, with fake name.

The investigator communicated with him and asked to meet, he thought we are traders want  to buy what he have for the first time , then we had introduced our self as journalists, after a while, he accepted to meet us at café in Antioch border city with Syria.

The young man who is trading in selling of small archaeological pieces like: Romanian coins currencies or gold ornaments, adding to glass – manufactured bottles was hiding in close apartment a statue to “Hercules” got it out of Palmyra city, after he had found it with his cousin at one of the farms in the archaeological area.

“Hercules” is famous as a hero with a super power, and he is son of the famous Greek goddess “Zeus” which represents as an iconic of western arts, literature & popular culture at the Greece and the Romans, and his existence in Palmyra city not a coincidence because of the city dating back to Greece & Romanian era and it is an extension of it in year of 282 AD.

“When I stared at the clay covered- statue for the first time, I thought that I will become a rich, so I exhibited it to traders, but I was chocked because they didn’t pay me the required sum” as Yusuf says.

Yusuf wants against the statue an amount for/ $100.000/ one hundred thousand dollars (equals to 55 Fifty–Five million Syrian pounds), He explains in a faint voice after he lit a cigarette and said “In Syria the traders exploit us”.

The international UNESCO organization is estimates the volume of this trade between Syria, Iraq & the world to 7 -15 billion dollars.

The most profit works

The sculptures , statues, miniatures , cuneiform tablets, clay / pottery boards, currencies and old Mosaic panels, which dating back to previous civilizations lived in Syrian lands since thousands years are the most important things for this trade ,shown by social media pages , and what are revealed by the brokers & traders who were met by the investigator.

Persons & networks ensure transferring collectibles by smuggling it to neighboring countries then selling it to third parties or keeping it until obtaining the required price which estimates of thousands dollars.

At the border area, Syrian pieces dating back to an old civilizations & kingdoms alongside Euphrates River are offered to sale, it is one of the oldest world civilizations, like: Mary’s Archaeological City which flourished in the third millennium B.C, Dura Europos (300 B.C) and Syrian coast areas like Ugarit (6000 B.C).

“Most of the smuggled archaeology is come from areas outside the control of Syrian regime, where archaeology excavation’s operation & looting of archaeological sites were done” According to Al-khabour’s survey.

He clarifies that” The excavation operations are going in advance – known sites, where the archaeological missions had worked in, in addition to undiscovered sites like Archaeological hills, and there are also many public markets for stolen archaeology inside Syria”.

Ghawzangh Shu, Implementation and Facilitation Director in the world customs organization (WCO) said at Paris International Conference of 2014, which is discussing” the Heritage and cultural diversity’s that both are endangered in Iraq & Syria”, “Looting the cultural properties is one of the oldest organized crimes across the border, and today became widespread phenomenon all over the world, smuggling the cultural heritage still forms a catastrophe hits the countries’ heritage across the world.

Yearly, thousands of ِArchaeological pieces disappear from the museums ,churches, private groups and public  foundations, starting from old weapons down to the paintings, currencies, watches, religious antiques, archaeological pieces and  cultural heritage , all of them exposed to steal”.

“Most of the smuggled archaeology is come from areas outside the control of Syrian regime, where archeology excavation’s operation & looting of archaeological sites were done”.

“The clear relation between this kind of crime, tax evasion & money laundry has confirmed, and no one can estimate the profits from the looted, stole or smuggled artworks reliably, but experts agree that it represents one of the largest illegal world companies which value reaches to billion dollars and that seduces the organized crime” , according to Shu.    

Marketing the looted pieces

To become a rich person is aim of every person working in this trade and isn’t enough finding the archaeological pieces after illegal excavation, but there is also selling or transferring it outside Syrian- border, what exactly Yusuf did when he had found Hercules statue.”We had communicated with a smuggler in Idleb, then we entered the statue on a donkey back, because it is heavy I can’t run while I am lifting It.” as the man explained us the operation.

Yusuf described us this operation inside the house we have met, indicating from the room mountain -view’s window to a mountain road which you can see it directly by eyes through the window” from over there I entered, I paid one thousand dollars (equals to 550 thousand Syrian pounds) for a smuggler”.

The Statue’s trip

Yusuf moved the statue from Palmyra city to Raqqa by a car at the beginning of 2107, the city was then under “Isis” organization’s control.

Then he moved the statue by a car to Al-bab city – northern Aleppo countryside, which it was under Isis control also then moved later to Idleb which was under Factions of the Free Army’ control, finally settled down in Harem city at Syrian –Turkish border.

This transferring operation indicates to Isis’ control on the Syrian cities, which is facilitated the excavation operations & archaeology’s illegal trade from the transferring operation down to ability of offer & sale it.

“Isis’ organization was giving excavation permissions by Alrekkaz /Ore Office – the responsible of what are under the land from oil or archaeology, against of taking 20% of the found pieces’ value” as Yusf says.

According to Al Khabour, Yusuf and others who we have met in this investigation, thus the archaeology markets are outside Syria border at the neighboring countries such as: Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq & Jordan.

Gulf’s big Traders

Archaeology traders are communicating with each other usually at south of Turkey by communication apps & instant conversations through internet network, thus they are following-up the archaeology smuggling operations which include: Archaeological stone pieces, gold & metal pieces.

Isaac and Juma are “small” Syrian traders as they are saying, because they think that “there are rankings for trade, starting from the archaeological pieces’ owner then the brokers’ role down to the “whale”- the man who buys everything”.

The situation in Syria motivated the illegal archaeology’s trade, and the local people started to excavate for antiques & treasures due to lacking of resources & poverty, as happened with Juma & Isaac who are getting benefit from social media and the development of technology in the selling, buying, demand and offer.

Issac asserts that social media made the work much easier, he doesn’t need any more to travel from Gaziantep to Şanlıurfa  – the border cities with Syria for instance.

To see the archaeological entered pieces from Syria, he only asks the piece’s owner to photograph, write his name and the date beside the archaeological piece, to make sure of its authenticity & existence, he informs who need it, after that will be examined by an experts, and finally the purchasing operation will be done.

“The archaeological pieces are sold a lot to Arabian Gulf merchants who buy archaeology & gold, paying big sums which sometime exceed to million dollars, and they are using transfers at the black markets to prevent detection the big transferred sums.” as Issac says.

Issac allowed us going with him to know his handling way with other traders, so we went to his friend Juma house beside Turkish Gaziantep city.

Juma prefers to come at night “it is more safety” and he clarified that by a phone call to Isaac “To avoid any trouble” upon his opinion.

Juma opened the door, due to issac’s loud voice calling him.

Juma-30 years old, with a pale brown face & slim body sounds very afraid of working in such field, “If his order were revealed, he will spend the rest of his life in prisons”, as he says.

At his poor house, he saying “we are talking with you due to existing many big mafias who steal the sculptures & massive archaeology, but for us as poor people we are working in simple things just to live in this country, where everything is few for us”.

Directly the talk about Juma’s archaeological pieces began between Isaac & juma for their prices, quantity, where are the rest of the pieces? And where they are come from? , He informed him all the details.

Juma has Romanian metal currencies, the value of each piece for $300-500 (equals to 165 – 275 thousands Syrian pound), the total of them /150/ metal pieces still in Syria,” all of them found during excavation at north of Manbig city, and to bring them to Turkey are very easy in case of paying a good sum” as he says.

A Popular trade

Omar Glick, the Turkish Minister of Culture & Tourism talked about his ministry’s policy to prevent entering the Syrian cultural heritage to Turkey.

And he talked about the big development in smuggling of the Syrian cultural things across the Turkish border since beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, but the government is seeking to limit the smuggling operations across its border and inside its lands.

According to Turkish act No.2863of 1973, to transfer or smuggle archaeology are punished by aggravated imprisonment & seizure, lately were arrested smugglers & Syrian archaeology’s traders, according to News agencies & Turkish media.

Is this archaeology real?

We tried to make sure of Yusuf’s statue authenticity, and the truth of other archaeological Collectibles’ pictures, thus we sent the statue’s picture after their permission to Stefan Lund -Swedish archaeologist, specialist Prof. in Middle East archaeology – Gothenburg University &   Sweden international researches center.

Prof. asserted the statue’s authenticity, and it is a priceless statue in Europe and costs a lot of money, and he says “It is Hercules statue with distinguished lion skin dating back to the Greek- Hellenistic era”.

Prof. Lund’s asserts of the statue’s authenticity & importance are repeated by another archaeologist, who was working as a previous head of an archaeological mission in Syria before 2011, and right now is working as a Prof. in the Middle East archaeology’s Department -European university, refused mentioning his name for legal reasons relate in his work And to prevent him from appraising the archaeology at the black market.

We showed him the statue & other archaeological pieces’ pictures from social media and black market in Turkey, they are (Boy head, Hercules marble statue, two small marble statues and all of them dating back to Hellenistic – Greek era), his answer by E-mail on 19 last March to the investigator was:” clearly some of the pieces from Palmyra city, of the art style side, and some contain Aramaic inscriptions can be identified easily, thus no doubt of its origin from Palmyra and Roman era”.

According to Prof. these archaeological pieces are:” popular to some extent in eastern Mediterranean Regions ,including Syria and mosaic paintings dating back to Hellenistic-Greek era can be found in the rich excavated private houses  in eastern Mediterranean , and the pieces are authentic certainly”.

Transit Countries

“Turkey & Syria’s neighbors are “Transit” countries, because the last market for this archaeology is Europe, where they are sold in auctions or in the old arts antiques shops”.

According to Al-khabour, who has a deep knowledge in Syria’s archaeological heritage and cooperated UNESCO organization in Syrian archaeology protection matter.

He says:”London market is an attractive for these archaeological pieces, especially the smuggled one”, adding:”in the European market there are big demand for archaeology, and this place is the best market for selling these pieces with big sums”.

These archaeological pieces are ” popular to some extent in eastern Mediterranean Regions ,including Syria and mosaic paintings dating back to Hellenistic-Greek era can be found in the rich excavated private houses  in eastern Mediterranean , and the pieces are authentic certainly”.

Forging certificates of Origin

We tried to search & make sure of Khabour’s words, if these markets are attractive for smuggled & looted Syrian pieces or whether they are the last place for them.

Communicating with smugglers, brokers or even who work in this field is very difficult, due its danger, where our both attempts with two merchants failed after we had communicated them by “social media”, then we tried again with one of the merchants & brokers in Europe and no one accepted to talk even.

Georgin 50 – years old is trading of both Chinese & Egyptian archaeological pieces, living in Germany – France from Denmark originally.

We talked with him as an archaeological pieces’ owners who have archaeological pieces for sale not as journalists, thus he accepted to meet us after he had asked for pictures.

He met us in his car at one of the European capitals “what is the archaeological showed piece for sale?”He asked directly after our arrival, so I gave him Hercules statue picture.

While he was staring at statue’s pictures put his eye glasses on and asked” Are there any documents for the statue?”,”No” We answered , then he asked “Does it exist in Europe?

“No” I answered, “it is in Turkey “, and He said “We will talk if the statue arrives to Europe”.

The intended documents by Georgin’s question are like a passport known as “certificate of origin” should be available with any sold & traded piece legally.

Because maybe the statue was at one of the art pieces auctions, and there are documents for the statue’s buying -selling before, or was owned by known family in the world and have old pictures for the statue in their houses.

He explained for us the necessity of the smuggled archaeological pieces’ documents to trade it legally, by forging their related origin certificates, thus they become ready for legal trading, then to show them in The International Auctions Houses for sale with fancy prices.

This is one of the methods which the looted Syrian archaeological antiques-finds find their way to the international markets, auctions and show houses across the world and avoiding the seizure & governmental control.

“It is an organized old networks flourished in Iraq since 2003, during American invasion then in Syria after the occurred problems”. As Khabour commented on the above mentioned merchant’s words.

Supply market to Europe

The main information’s memo – Annex No.6, issued from UNESCO in 2014 – “Preservation of heritage and cultural diversity is a humanitarian and security necessity in the light of the conflicts of the twenty-first century”, which indicates to:” the smuggling feeds the illegal trade’s system of the cultural properties, one of the main incomes for the organized crime (estimates between 7 -15 billion dollars yearly).

The trade methods exceed the neighboring countries like Lebanon, Turkey & United Arab Emirates to supply the art pieces’ markets in the United Kingdom, Switzerland & United State of America between other markets.

It is a global scourge that can only be combated at the international level, by cooperate of the governmental agencies like: Customs & Police Departments and the interested parties in art market, including auctions houses, museums and amateur of archaeological things collecting”.

The red –list & Interpol

Some of the European states are trying to enact new laws to limit the looted archaeology trading of the in conflicts- states like Syria, due to the link of this file with financing terrorism and extremist groups such as “Isis” organization for instance.

These efforts come right now after in the past were allowed to sell archaeological pieces which had reached to Europe, according to Khabour.

This situation has been continued until 2016, where the Germany government initiated to limit this trade through providing that submitting an identification document with each piece or proof that it belongs to an important persons, and then will be allowed to sell or show it.

Each piece doesn’t accomplish these conditions will be considered smuggled & from illegal source, as khabour indicated.

There are other efforts are leading by organizations like International Council of Museums “ICOM” that responsible of the world museums.

The investigator communicated with the museum administration in order to know the shapes & pictures of the looted smuggled Syrian archaeology.

Some of the European states are trying to enact new laws to limit the looted archaeology trading of the in conflicts- states like Syria, due to the link of this file with financing terrorism and extremist groups such as “Isis” organization for instance.

The administration asserted that a guide under title of “Red emergency list of the threatened Syrian cultural properties” that issued, printed in 2013 & distributed to the international police “Interpol in order to identify the Syrian archaeological pieces, to help art professionals, heritage specialists & law enforcement officials to identify the looted Syrian archaeological pieces which be traded in the International Art Market”.

The guide contains pictures & shapes of archaeological pieces and chronology in order to identify them, intercept and confiscate them providing that delivering them to the country of origin, and these pieces should be registered & numbered at the country of origin, and information’s intersection with Interpol to facilitate the process of intercepting, controlling and to limit trading of them.

“UNESCO” role as an international organization to document, preserve the material & cultural heritage for peoples, but it refused to communicate with us despite of sending questions by e-mail to its office on last 25 March without any respond, thus “UNESCO ” role limited on activities which concentrate on accomplishing harmony between the initiatives and multi solutions regarding archaeology trading as Khabour describes it.

Yusuf impatiently waiting who buy Hercules statue and don’t care if the statue has later an authentic or forged certificate of origin, but only cares of selling it with good price and he says who buy the statue should transfer it in any way they want, clarifying that: ” a German man was paid $55 thousand dollars for the statue, but I did not sell”, according to him.

Adding,”I will keep the statue with me until obtaining of the best price”.

Yusuf returned back Hercules statue to the canvas bag, tied it tightly by a metal tape, holding it as baby between his arms and left the room saying with a shy smile while staring to the bag:”Hercules, you will not see the sun until a well-paid customer comes and appreciates your value”.

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