Syria: Relative of Assad regime’s disappeared speaks of anguish in search for truth and justice

This article is published in association with United Nations.

A relative of two Syrians tortured and murdered by the Assad regime has spoken of the anguish caused by their enforced disappearance during the country’s civil war.

Obeida Dabbagh’s brother Mazen, and nephew Patrick – both Syrian-French nationals – were arrested by Air Force Intelligence officials in November 2013.

Held for years and tortured, there were falsely declared dead in 2018 “years after they disappeared,” Mr. Dabbagh told the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, which meets at the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG).

Arbitrary victims

He stressed that his uncle and nephew had not been involved in initially peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad that authorities attempted to crush by carrying out mass arrests, torture and widespread human rights abuses that have been widely condemned by UN senior officials.

“The Syrian regime, in addition to torture and executions, extorted money from our family, promising us information or release in exchange for exorbitant sums, before expelling [Mazen’s] wife and [his] daughter from our family home in Damascus,” Mr. Dabbagh told the panel, which is one of ten UN human rights Treaty Bodies independent of the Human Rights Council.

Fight against impunity

“This fight goes beyond my family,” Mr. Dabbagh continued.

“It is part of a universal quest for justice and against impunity for war crimes. Through this legal action, I wanted not only to obtain justice for Mazen and Patrick, but also to participate in the global fight against the atrocities committed by the Syrian regime.”

Before they were arrested, Mazen provided teaching support at a French college in the Syrian capital and his son Patrick was a psychology student at Damascus university.

Desperate to secure their release, their family approached the Syrian, French and international authorities, including the Red Cross and European Union.

In 2016, alongside the NGO International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the family filed a complaint with the Paris Prosecutor’s office for crimes against humanity.

Key French intervention

This legal action allowed the French justice system to open an investigation and collect key testimonies, particularly from Syrian deserters. This led to an indictment order in March 2023 for three senior Syrian regime officials to stand trial for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Following their trial in France last May, Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan and Abdel Salam Mahmoud were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for complicity in imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance and murder constituting crimes against humanity, as well as for confiscation of property, classified as a war crime.

International rights framework

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances monitors how countries implement the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2006 and came into force in December 2010.

Ratifying countries are legally bound to its provisions, including the prohibition of secret detention, the obligation to search for disappeared persons, the criminalization of enforced disappearance and the commitment to prosecute those responsible.

For the Committee, independent rights expert Fidelis Kanyongolo highlighted the critical importance of extra-territorial jurisdiction in the Committee’s work, given that many States have yet to ratify the Convention – along with the fact that Syria has not ratified the Rome Statute, which would have allowed the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute serious human rights crimes there.

In addition, there has been no resolution from the UN Security Council referring grave rights abuses in Syria to the ICC and the domestic justice system remains neither independent nor accountable, Mr, Kanyongolo maintained.

Trailblazing global accord

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance is the first universally legally binding human rights instrument concerning the practice.

It was preceded by the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1992.

With 77 State parties today, the Convention remains a key reference, with several of its provisions now reflecting customary international law.

Call for Justice

In a statement marking 14 years since the start of the Syrian civil war, the UN Human Rights Council-mandated Commission of Inquiry on Syria called for urgent efforts to hold all perpetrators accountable, both from the Assad era and all warring parties since 2011.

“Evidence, including documents in prisons, courts and mass grave sites, must be preserved to support future truth and accountability initiatives led by the new Syrian authorities, with the support of key actors such as Syrian civil society,” the Commission stated.