On the edge of Douma, one of Damascus’ most war-torn suburbs, in a curtained living room next to a stove, Umm Mazen recounts the 12 years she spent desperately searching for news of her two sons, who were arrested in the early years of the uprising and civil war and absorbed into the system. security of the Assad era.
For her eldest son, Mazen, she finally obtained a death certificate, but for Abu Hadi, no trace of him was ever issued.
Her third son, Ahmed, spent three years in the security system, including eight months in the red block for political prisoners in the notorious Saydnaya prison.
His front teeth baked by the executioner’s hammer, he remembers one moment when he thinks he heard his brother Mazen’s voice answering the roll call in the same prison, but no more.
What kind of justice does Um Mazen seek for the destruction of her family?
“There must be divine justice that comes from God,” she says.
“I saw some local men leading a shabih (an armed regime supporter) to be killed.
“I told them, ‘Don’t kill him, rather torture him exactly like he tortured our young men.’
“Two of my children died — or may have died, but there are thousands of other young people who have been tortured.
“I pray to God that Bashar (Assad) remains in the underground and that Russia, which protected him, could not help him.
“I pray to God that somewhere underground he will be caught and that he will remain in oblivion – the way he left our young people in their prisons.”
