Detainees’ families mark Assad’s fall: Joy incomplete without justice

DAMASCUS — Thousands of Syrians gathered in the streets and squares of Damascus on Monday, as in cities across the country, to celebrate the first anniversary of the day 54 years of the Assad family’s rule of Syria came to an end following a lightning offensive by opposition forces. 

Among those celebrating—and remembering—were family members of Syria’s detained and disappeared, including those killed under torture and the more than 160,000 who remain missing.

Some gathered at a vigil in central Damascus organized by the Caesar Families Association, an organization of the families of victims identified in the Caesar pictures, a set of more than 50,000 images, showing the bodies of 11,000 detainees, that were smuggled out of Syria and published in 2014.  

“The fear and terror are gone, torture and enforced disappearance in the prisons is gone,” Ruqayya al-Sheikh, 45, told Syria Direct at the gathering. “You feel the security forces at the checkpoints are part of the people, they are all smiling.” 

Members of the association distributed white flowers and cards reading: “the memory lives on, the warmth of a rose may be the start of a path towards a homeland where joy returns…and all those who are absent return.” The text emphasized hope, but also a commitment to work to “achieve justice, which we hope draws nearer, so every heart can find its way to peace.”

Al-Sheikh, who is from Syria’s northeastern Deir e-Zor province, is the wife of Oqba Ali al-Mashaan, a veterinarian who was detained by the Assad regime in late March 2012. His picture was later found among the Caesar photos. 

“I have two daughters with him. He left me with a five-month-old baby girl and another who was two and a half at the time. They took him from an Air Force Intelligence branch checkpoint while he was on his way to work,” al-Sheikh told Syria Direct. Her family searched for him at the regime’s security branches in Deir e-Zor, to no avail. “After a month, we received word that they had transferred him to Damascus.” 

The search for al-Mashaan went on for three years. Lawyers and regime officers “extorted money from us, took huge sums” in exchange for information, she said. “We had gold, and his family sold their house for this. Twenty days after the last sum they took from us, his picture appeared among the Caesar photos.”

“They had told us he would be released, that he was still alive,” al-Sheikh added. “It turned out their words were lies. He died under torture a month after his arrest.”

Despite the magnitude of what she has lost in her life partner and the father of her two daughters, al-Sheikh expressed overwhelming joy at the fall of the regime. “I am very happy today,” she said. “Today is the day of our pride and victory, the day of our dignity, the day we were freed from oppression, enslavement and tyranny. This day, we felt our dignity as citizens, while before we were humiliated, ruled by an unjust tyrant.” 

While “the economic situation is still bad, [and people are struggling] with poverty, we’ve breathed a sigh of relief and rested our souls,” al-Sheikh added. She believes Syria is moving “towards the better.” 

The question of justice, “holding the perpetrators accountable, holding the jailers accountable—at their head Bashar al-Assad” remains. “We demand he be held accountable, and punished,” she said.

The rights of the children and relatives of those who disappeared into regime prisons are entitled to “compensation,” al-Sheikh added. “I have two daughters with no provider. We have suffered and sacrificed, so we want to provide education [for our children] and a source of livelihood for them, as well as housing.” 

Children participate in a gathering organized by the Caesar Families Association for the families and children of those missing in Assad regime prisons, at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, 8/12/2025 (Natacha Danon/Syria Direct)

Fatima al-Nazzal, 48, lost her husband Maher Abdulaziz al-Ali in February 2012 in Damascus city. For years, she tried to obtain any information about his fate “to no end,” she told Syria Direct. “We went to the government offices and couldn’t find his name.” When the Caesar photos were published, “we found his picture among those tortured to death.” 

“Victory and liberation are the only consolation,” al-Nazzal said. “We wouldn’t give away our joy to anyone.” 

What al-Nazzal wants now, like al-Sheikh, is justice. “We hope the authorities will hold everyone who harmed a human being accountable,” she said. She also hopes “the government will be able to identify the sites where the martyrs were buried.” In the year since the regime fell, many mass graves containing the bodies of people killed by the Assad regime have been discovered. 

Crowds of Syrians march under the Freedom Bridge, formerly known as the President’s Bridge, in downtown Damascus as they head to Umayyad Square to celebrate the first anniversary of the December 2024 fall of the Assad regime, 8/12/2025 (Natacha Danon/Syria Direct)

Similarly, al-Nazzal called for concrete support from the government for relatives and survivors. “Look at our situation. We are tired, poor families with no homes or monthly salaries. We have orphaned children at young ages, we hope they can continue their education,” she said.

Although the Caesar pictures were released in 2014, the family of Joudi al-Hallaq, 19, only found her father’s picture years later. “He was arrested and died in detention in 2013, but we did not know he died until 2020.”

At the gathering in Damascus on Monday, al-Hallaq felt “very mixed emotions,” she told Syria Direct. “I remember what happened in the past, how the regime treated us, and I compare that with how the army treats us today,” she said.

“I am very happy with the fall of the regime and the liberation of Syria, but at the same time I am not happy regarding the detainees and the forcibly disappeared. Until now, nobody is working seriously on their issue, and we, as families of the detainees, are still lost between civil society organizations, the government and [official] commissions.”

“The new era in Syria has erased the era of criminality, and we aspire for a Syria that is beautiful, without enforced disappearance, where there is justice for all,” al-Hallaq said. 

That justice must extend to “all Syrians, in word and deed, not only those who were subjected to violations at the hands of the Assad regime, but all parties: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, [the Islamic State] IS and the [Syrian Democratic Forces] SDF,” she added. That includes “justice for the martyrs, and for the perpetrators and criminals not to be rehabilitated, because we want honest people working for the country.”  

Natacha Danon contributed reporting.

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.