With the passage of more than 3 months since the fall of the Bashar al -Assad regime, the secrets of its crimes continue to appear. In this period, the families of former detainees are awaiting the knowledge of the fate of their relatives, in a move that is one of the most prominent paths of transitional justice in conjunction with the 14th anniversary of the Syrian revolution.
Al -Jazeera obtained more than 6500 pictures of anonymous bodies, whose owners died under torture in the city of Aleppo, and this special investigation reveals the details of an arduous journey that lasted a few months, during which the island documented how the disposal of the bodies was taking place in the city.
Through testimonies collected by the Al -Jazira team, it was found that there are thousands of documents and pictures that prove the identity of the victims in the mass graves in Aleppo.
The pictures, which the island, show terrifying details of the methods used by the Syrian regime to get rid of the bodies of the detainees who died under torture.
Among these pictures, an estimated 6500 pictures of the bodies of the bodies were carefully photographed, some of which show the bodies of hand -tied and blindfolded, and they carry the traces of gunshots in the head or the effects of hanging or terrible torture.
Painful search trip
In an interview with Mrs. Samoud Jano, who was searching for her detained brother, she tells how her heart was almost breaking up with every picture that passes in front of her, hoping that the image of her brother was not.
But in the end, the number 2340 appeared, so that the investigation could reveal the image of her brother who was killed under torture, and Samoud says, “Every image passed in front of us was carrying the hope that the image of our loved ones would not be, but in the end my brother’s image, who was killed by a bullet in the head, appeared.”
By the month and a half of the research, the island had reached information that the Criminal Security Branch in Aleppo was the authority to document and photograph the bodies.
The head of the evidence department in the branch, for the Al -Jazeera team, explained the process of documenting the bodies and how they were photographed, noting that the number of bodies that were carried out exceeded 4 thousand.
Investigations were conducted in cooperation with the pathologist, who confirmed that most of the bodies were carrying the traces of brutal torture.
Field executions
The investigation revealed that there are approximately 200 pictures belonging to about 100 people who were executed in the field between December 2016 and January 2017, that is, in the period when the regime forces stormed the eastern neighborhoods in Aleppo.
The methods used by the regime to kill these detainees were brutal in a way that was more than describing, as the head was shot, the detainees were hanging or torture with electricity.
As it was found from the investigations, the security services were deliberately hiding the identity of the victims, and each corpse was depicted was given a number, and described as “unidentified”.
The forensic doctor, who spoke to the island, confirmed that these practices were taking place systematically to cover the crimes. The bodies were sending to military and university hospitals and then buried in mass graves without the victims’ families knowing their fate.
During the investigation rounds, Al -Jazira team met one of the former military in the Military Security Branch in Aleppo, which was a witness to the regime’s practices in getting rid of the bodies of the detainees.
Abd al -Latif Muhammad, who was in one of the worst security branches, saw how the security services were disposing of the bodies by throwing them in the streets or buried them in mass graves, and confirmed that he had seen the bodies of hand -tied and blindfolded bodies, some of which carried clear traces of hanging on the necks.
(Tagstotranslate) News (T) News reports