Today, with the backing of the UN, one of those former detainees, Syrian human rights defender Riyad Avlar, is working to find out what happened to those who did not make it out – and seeking justice for the disappeared.
He recalls one mother’s stunned response when he told her that her son had died in detention: “I accept this, but I have not lost hope. One day, my son will walk in and meet you here.”
Her words reflect the resilience of families who continue to seek truth and justice after years of uncertainty, insists Riyad, who was imprisoned for more than two decades after being arrested in 1996 aged 19.
Documenting absence, preserving truth
For Riyad, his struggle for justice did not end with his release in 2017.
Before his appointment to the UN Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria’s first Advisory Board, Riyad channelled his experience into supporting survivors of detention and their families through the Association of Detainees and the Missing of Sednaya Prison (ADMSP).
The association’s founders include former detainees like Riyad and have become a crucial source of documentation, support and advocacy.
“Our mission,” he explains, “is to empower survivors and the families of the disappeared to be central actors in transitional justice, accountability and reparations in Syria.”
Since its establishment, ADMSP has created two databases: the first records testimonies from survivors of Sednaya and, since 2021, from detention centres across Syria.
These testimonies identify perpetrators of abuse, last sightings of detainees and patterns of violations. The second database collects information from families searching for loved ones, often providing them with the first reliable confirmation of what happened.
Cages in which prisoners were apparently held are pictured at the infamous Sednaya prison in Damascus.
A do-no-harm approach
“Every interview is conducted face-to-face, with careful attention to avoid re-traumatisation,” Riyad explains. Alongside documentation, the association runs a centre offering psychotherapy, physiotherapy and group therapy for survivors and families coping with the trauma of disappearance. It also shields families from being extorted by individuals selling lies about the fate of their disappeared relatives by helping them to check what they have been told.
Constant fear of execution
Riyad’s dramatic story began when he left his rural village in Turkey to pursue his studies in Syria. Arrested in 1996 by the Assad regime and not even 20 years old, he was then held incommunicado for 15 years. His family only learned he was alive thanks to the intervention of a friend’s mother.
During his detention, Riyad endured solitary confinement, torture and near-total isolation. “I saw my brother twice, for 15 minutes each, in more than two decades,” he recalls. “When I was released, my mother just held me and breathed me in; she wanted to remember the smell of her son. Later, when my son was a year and a half old, I finally understood why my mother clung to me like that.”
Denied a fair trial and charged with fabricated accusations, Riyad lived in constant fear of execution. These experiences, he says, are what drive him to ensure that survivors’ voices shape the pursuit of accountability and justice.
Everyone suffers in their own way
In addition to the horrors meted out to Syria’s disappeared, 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, Riyad explains.
“Every family member suffers differently,” he says. “But what unites them is the right to know.”
Riyad Avlar was detained for 21 years. During his detention in Syria’s Assad regime prisons, Riyad endured solitary confinement, torture and near-total isolation.
A global mandate for justice
Today, Riyad serves on the Advisory Board of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria, established in 2023 by the UN General Assembly to address one of the conflict’s most painful legacies.
Selected from more than 250 applicants, the 11-member board includes representatives of victims’ families, Syrian civil society and international experts. It is mandated to clarify the fate of the missing, support families and contribute to accountability.
According to the NGO Syrian Network for Human Rights, at least 181,312 individuals remain arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared, including 5,332 children and 9,201 women.
“The task is immense,” Riyad tells UN News, from 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 heavy responsibility
To survivors of detention, Riyad sends a message of solidarity: “We must raise our voices and demand justice – not revenge – but accountability and reparations. We are alive, and that is a responsibility.”
His message is also one of survival. “When I was arrested, the phones were the old push-button ones. And when I got out, I saw phones you just touch with your finger…Life had changed so much, I was shocked. The village I had left behind was very underdeveloped, but now they had paved roads, people had cars; there were water taps inside the houses, even a sewage system.
“Little by little, I adapted. I decided I had to move forward, because after such a long absence – 20 years – it was as if someone had frozen me in a freezer and then suddenly, I was released into a science fiction movie.”
He stresses that families of the missing must never be left without answers, and every Syrian family has the right to know the fate of their loved ones, to lay them to rest with dignity and to begin the process of healing.
And if truth is the cornerstone of Syria’s future, so too is transitional justice, Riyad maintains, with survivors and families playing a central role in shaping what comes next.
