Today, with the support of the UN, one of those former detainees, the defender of Syrian human rights, Riyad Avlar, is working to discover what happened to those who did not achieve, and looking for justice for the missing.
He remembers the stunned response of a mother when she told her that her son had died in detention: “I accept this, but I have not lost hope. One day, my son will enter and see you here. “
His words reflect the resilience of families that continue to seek truth and justice after years of uncertainty, he insists on Riyad, who was imprisoned for more than two decades after being arrested in 1996 at age 196.
Document the absence, preserve the truth
For Riyad, his struggle for justice did not end his release in 2017.
Before its appointment for the UN independent institution on missing persons at the First Advisory Board of Syria, Riyad channeled their experience in supporting detention survivors and their families through the association of stops and the disappearance of the prison of Sednaya (ADMSP).
The founders of the association include former detainees as Riyad and have become a crucial source of documentation, support and defense.
“Our mission,” he explains, “is to empower the survivors and families of the disappeared to be central actors in transition justice, responsibility and repairs in Syria.”
Since its establishment, ADMSP has created two databases: the first testimonies of Sednaya survivors records and, since 2021, of detention centers in Syria.
These testimonies identify abuse perpetrators, the latest detainees and violation patterns. The second database collects information from families looking for loved ones, often providing them with the first reliable confirmation of what happened.
The cages in which prisoners are apparently maintained in the infamous prison of Sednaya in Damascus.
An approach of not doing in the employer
“Each interview is done face to face, with careful attention to avoid re-traumatization,” Riyad explains. Together with the documentation, the association directs a center that offers psychotherapy, physiotherapy and group therapy for survivors and families that face the trauma of the disappearance. It also protects families from being extorted by people who sell lies about the fate of their missing relatives by helping them verify what they have told them.
Constant fear of execution
Riyad’s dramatic story began when he left his rural village in Türkiye to follow his studies in Syria. Arrested in 1996 by the Assad regime and not even 20 years, then it was held in incommunicado for 15 years. His family only learned that he was alive thanks to the intervention of a friend’s mother.
During his arrest, Riyad suffered lonely confinement, torture and almost total isolation. “I saw my brother twice, for 15 minutes each, in more than two decades,” he recalls. “When they released me, my mother hugged me and breathed me; I wanted to remember the smell of her son. Later, when my son was a year and a half, I finally understood why my mother clung to me like that.”
He denied a fair trial and accused of accusations made, Riyad lived with a constant fear of execution. These experiences, he says, are the ones that promote him to ensure that the voices of the survivors shape the search for responsibility and justice.
All suffer in their own way
In addition to the horrors given to the disappearance of Syria, another common denominator is the anguish that torments their families. Mothers live for years without answers, while wives and children face stigma, harassment and exile, explains Riyad.
“Every family member suffers differently,” he says. “But what unites them is the right to know.”
Riyad Avlar was arrested for 21 years. During his arrest in the prisons of the Assad regime of Syria, Riyad endured lonely confinement, torture and almost total isolation.
A global mandate for justice
Today, Riyad serves at the advisory board of the Independent institution on missing people in Syriaestablished in 2023 by the UN General Assembly to address one of the most painful legacies of the conflict.
Selected from more than 250 applicants, the Board of 11 members includes representatives of the families of the victims, the Syrian civil society and international experts. It is necessary to clarify the fate of the families that are missing and support and contribute to responsibility.
According to the Syrian Network of Human Rights of the NGO, At least 181,312 individuals remain detained or disappeared by force, including 5,332 children and 9,201 women.
“The task is immense,” says Riyad UN news, his Home in Turkïye. “But with cooperation between Syrian organizations and the international community, the institution can establish clear protocols for notification, psychological support and recognition of the disappeared.”
A great responsibility
For detention survivors, Riyad sends a message of solidarity: “We must raise our voices and demand justice, not revenge, but responsibility and repairs. We are alive, and that is a responsibility.”
Your message is also survival. “When I was arrested, the phones were the old buttons.
“Little by little, I adapted. I decided that I had to move on, because after such a long absence, it was as if someone had frozen me in a freezer and, suddenly, they threw me to a science fiction movie.”
It emphasizes that the families of the missing should never run out of responses, and each Syrian family has the right to know the fate of their loved ones, let them rest with dignity and begin the healing process.
And if the truth is the cornerstone of the future of Syria, so is the transition justice, Riyad maintains, with the survivors and families who play a central role in the configuration of what is coming later.