Documents show Assad-era security agencies concealed detainee deaths and forged records

Thousands of internal Syrian documents and interviews reviewed by The New York Times depict how security agencies under President Bashar al-Assad worked to conceal evidence of mass detentions, deaths and torture during the civil war, including doctoring paperwork and forging confessions.

The reporting describes a fall 2018 meeting at Mr. al-Assad’s presidential palace where a senior security official, Kamal Hassan, proposed removing detainees’ identities from records; Ali Mamlouk, head of the National Security Bureau, agreed to consider the idea, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

Subsequent actions by some branches included omitting branch and prisoner identification numbers on hospital transfers, backdating and forging confessions, and using photocopied fingerprints to disguise forgeries. The Times said it reviewed thousands of pages of internal memos marked “Top Secret,” photographed records inside security branches and interviewed more than 50 former officials and employees to verify the material.

The files and interviews also recount mass-grave operations overseen by Col. Mazen Ismandar, who, after a 2019 tip about a grave in Qutayfa, ordered bodies moved to the Dhumair desert. The probe notes the 2014 smuggling of more than 6,000 photos by a military photographer known as Caesar and cites United Nations figures that more than 100,000 people disappeared under Mr.

Key Topics

World, Bashar Al-assad, Syria, National Security Bureau, Ali Mamlouk, Palestine Branch