Thaer al-Najjar spent 13 years searching for his brother Imad, who was arrested by Syria’s former Assad regime in 2012. Even after the regime fell in December 2024 and Bashar al-Assad fled, Najjar continued his quest, visiting a notorious prison near Damascus in hopes of finding any trace of his missing brother.
Despite his efforts, Najjar received a piece of paper from a reporter confirming Imad’s death. The document, part of a massive leak of Syrian government files known as the Damascus dossier, was a death certificate dated August 14, 2012. Imad, a peaceful protester during the revolution against the dictatorship, was pronounced dead after failing to respond to resuscitation attempts.
The Damascus dossier, comprising 134,000 Syrian security and intelligence records, including 70,000 gruesome images of torture victims, sheds light on the atrocities committed by Assad’s forces during the civil war. The leaked files have provided closure to families like Najjar’s, revealing the fates of many long-missing individuals.
René Provost, a law professor at McGill University, emphasized the importance of these revelations, stating that families of the victims may finally learn the truth about their loved ones. The leaked files could also serve as crucial evidence for potential criminal investigations and prosecutions against Assad regime officials.
The photos in the dossier, meticulously cataloged by a former Syrian officer between 2020 and 2024, show the systematic brutality and execution practices under the Assad regime. This evidence, shared with various organizations, highlights the extent of human rights violations and may lead to accountability for those responsible.
