Alaa Qasar’s relentless search for her father highlights the plight of many Syrians still seeking answers after years of conflict and loss
Damascus: Alaa Qasar hasn’t seen her dad since 2013. The last time they were together, he looked at her like he was trying to memorize her face. Moutaz Adnan Qasar had just come back home after being released by the security forces. He had been arrested for taking his family out of the besieged suburb of Ghouta. But the next day, he was taken again, and that was the last anyone saw of him.
Alaa, now 29, remembers how they told her family he’d be back the next day. They claimed he was talking to terrorists, but that wasn’t true. He was just a regular guy going to work and coming home. For the past 11 years, she’s been on a mission to find him, talking to lawyers and security officials, but it’s been a dead end. She even dealt with shady middlemen who promised to help for a fee, but they were just scams.
Eventually, she heard her father might be in Sednaya, a prison infamous for its brutality. When rebels started freeing prisoners, she felt a flicker of hope. But even when the gates opened, her father didn’t come out.
She kept searching, even visiting Sednaya herself, but found nothing. Then, prison records went digital, and she typed in her father’s name. The result? A death certificate issued years ago. But Alaa won’t accept it. She’s heard stories of people who were declared dead but turned up alive later.
Fadel Abdulghany, who runs the Syrian Network for Human Rights, has been tracking the names of those who disappeared. He’s found that most of them likely died in prison, which is a grim reality. When the rebels opened the prisons, they documented 31,000 releases, but over 100,000 are still missing.
Alaa saw a post about new bodies found at a hospital in Damascus. She rushed there, but the staff insisted they hadn’t received any new bodies. Still, she pushed to check. Inside the morgue, she found a dozen corpses, but none were her father. She looked closely, hoping to find a small tattoo he had, but it wasn’t there.
As she searched, she saw the faces of those who had suffered. Some were clearly tortured, while others looked peaceful, as if they were just sleeping. It was heartbreaking. Alaa felt like she was in a museum of pain, hoping she wouldn’t find her father among them.
The Assad regime has created a maze of prisons and detention centers, making it nearly impossible for families to find their loved ones. When the regime fell, they left no guide for families like Alaa’s to navigate this nightmare.
In her search, Alaa has faced the brutal reality of what happened to many Syrians. She’s had to confront the torture chambers and the morgues, all while imagining the suffering her father might have endured. Another man searching for his uncle expressed the same fear: finding them there would be the real horror.
Outside the hospital, Alaa planned her next steps. She knew there were more bodies to check. Other families were there too, looking for their loved ones. Alaa felt the weight of responsibility as the eldest child. She didn’t want her mother to see the horrors she had witnessed, so she took it upon herself to keep searching.