Damascus, Aug. 30 (SANA) On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Hassan Mahmoud is once again confronting the question that has shaped his family’s life for more than 14 years: Where is his brother, Dr. Hayan Mahmoud?
The family knows when Hayan was arrested. Syria’s civil registry later recorded him as dead, and former detainees told the family they had witnessed what happened to him in detention.
But they still do not know where his remains are.
“There is no grave,” Hassan told SANA. “As long as we do not know where he is, our search continues.”
For the Mahmoud family, the absence of a body or burial place has meant that even after accepting Hayan’s death, they have never been able to say a final goodbye.
An open wound
Hayan’s story reflects one of the deepest unresolved wounds of enforced disappearance in Syria: families who may have learned that their relatives died but still do not know where their bodies were taken or buried.
His case is one among tens of thousands.
At least 177,021 people remain forcibly disappeared in Syria since March 2011, including 4,536 children and 8,984 women, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). The organization says the actual number is likely higher than the cases it has been able to document.
Behind those numbers are families facing the same fundamental questions as the Mahmouds: What happened to their relatives, and where are they?
For Hassan, the search for his brother eventually grew into something larger. He began documenting cases of enforced disappearance and speaking with survivors of Syria’s detention system before later testifying in Germany in one of the landmark criminal proceedings involving officials of the ousted regime.
Yet years of documentation and legal proceedings have still not answered his family’s most basic question.
Where is Hayan?
A young doctor with a future
Hayan Mahmoud was born in Salamiyah in 1986. His family remembers him as quiet, gentle and composed.
“Since childhood, he was quiet, kind and respectful,” Hassan said. “He avoided conflict and was loved by everyone.”
Hayan graduated at the top of his class from the University of Aleppo’s Faculty of Medicine before specializing in cardiology at Al-Mujtahid Hospital in Damascus.
His family and colleagues believed he had a promising medical career ahead of him.
Outside medicine, Hayan followed football, particularly Italy’s national team, and enjoyed classical music.
That life was cut short in July 2012.
Arrested at the hospital
Hayan was arrested by intelligence officers of the ousted Syrian regime while working at Al-Mujtahid Hospital, according to his family.
Hassan said the arrest followed a dispute with another doctor over massacres committed by the ousted regime. According to the family’s account, Hayan publicly condemned the killings and was subsequently reported to the intelligence services.
No charges were brought against him, and his family was not told where he was being held.
The search began almost immediately.
Family members went from hospitals to prisons and government offices seeking information but found no official answers.
Former detainees later told them they had seen Hayan in detention and that he had been tortured.
The family was left trying to determine which pieces of information were credible and which were simply rumours.
Paying for rumours
The absence of official information created another ordeal.
Hassan said intermediaries repeatedly approached the family claiming they could provide information about Hayan in exchange for money.
“We paid large sums simply to hear news that might be true,” Hassan said. “Most of it turned out to be false.”
Each new claim brought another cycle of hope and disappointment.
“Normally, death begins with the news, then the burial, then mourning,” Hassan said. “We were denied all of that.”
The family also tried to protect their mother from the information they feared most.
In 2022, an official civil registry document listed Hayan as deceased.
They did not tell her.
Instead, Hassan said, the family altered a copy of the document so their mother would continue to believe her son was alive.
“My mother looked at the paper and said happily, ‘Hayan is alive.’ Imagine watching your own mother celebrate a lie that you and your brothers created.”
Hope returns, then disappears
Following the fall of the ousted regime, hope briefly returned.
An audio recording began circulating with claims that Hayan had been released alive.
For a family that had spent years searching for any indication that he might have survived, the recording was enough to revive the possibility that he could return.
“We screamed with joy,” Hassan recalled.
But the information proved false.
“We went from hope straight back to disappointment.”
The family eventually accepted that Hayan had died, but acceptance did not bring closure.
“There was no funeral, no burial, no remains,” Hassan said.
From searching to documenting
Hayan’s disappearance changed the direction of Hassan’s life.
After moving to Germany, he began working with human rights organizations and collecting testimony from survivors of Syria’s detention system.
His search for information about his brother became intertwined with efforts to document what had happened to detainees who disappeared into the ousted regime’s security apparatus.
Hassan later testified before a court in Koblenz, Germany, where former Syrian intelligence officials were prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction over systematic torture at Branch 251 in Damascus.
Former intelligence officer Anwar Raslan was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment.
“It was painful to speak,” Hassan said. “But it was necessary.”
Giving evidence also carried consequences for the family, Hassan said.
Another brother who remained in Syria was pursued by the ousted regime’s security services before eventually fleeing to France under humanitarian protection.
The Koblenz proceedings established criminal responsibility for crimes committed within the detention system.
But for Hassan, they could not resolve the question he had been asking since 2012.
Where was his brother taken after his death?
Another disappearance
The family’s ordeal did not end with Hayan.
Hassan said his cousin, Basel Mahmoud, was performing compulsory military service in Daraa in 2012 when reports began circulating that Hayan had died.
Basel requested leave to attend what he believed would be his cousin’s funeral, according to Hassan.
When Basel explained the circumstances to his commanding officer, Hassan said, his account was met with ridicule.
A few weeks later, Basel contacted his family and warned them that his relationship to Hayan had placed him in danger.
He told them to forget about him.
Soon afterwards, he disappeared.
“Just as Hayan disappeared, so did Basel,” Hassan said. “To this day, we do not know what happened to him or where he is buried.”
He has never been seen again.
A search for a place to mourn
For Hassan, the years since Hayan’s arrest have shown that establishing what happened inside detention facilities is only part of the search for truth.
His family has information indicating that Hayan died. They have testimony from former detainees. They have a civil registry record declaring him dead.
What they do not have is his body.
They do not have a grave.
And they do not know where to go to mourn him.
For families of the disappeared, knowing that a relative died does not necessarily answer what happened to their remains or where they were buried.
The scale of enforced disappearance in Syria means the Mahmoud family’s unanswered questions are shared by tens of thousands of others. Each unresolved case represents not only a missing person but a family still waiting for information, remains or a place to grieve.
For the Mahmoud family, finding Hayan’s burial place would not undo what happened. But it would end one part of a search that has lasted for more than 14 years.
Hassan’s request is ultimately simpler than the court proceedings, documents and testimony that have accumulated since his brother disappeared.
He wants to know where Hayan is.
More than 14 years after his arrest, Hassan is still searching for a place where he can stand, recite Al-Fatiha and mourn his brother.
Muhammad Fares
