Syria - سوريا

The last time Ms. al-Neshi saw her son was in 2019, a year after he was arrested at age 20 from his dorm at Homs University. She had tracked him down in Sednaya and paid a prison officer a $9,000 bribe to visit him. When the guards dragged a young man toward her — feet shackled, hands tied, skin hanging off his bones — she burst into tears.

“I told them, ‘This is not my son,’” she said. “But he told me: ‘I’m your son, Mom. It’s me.”

A month later, the same officer told her Mr. Salam had died, but she refused to believe him. “I told them: ‘I saw him with my own eyes. How are you telling me he’s not alive now?’” she recalled, her cheeks wet with tears.

As she looked on, the mob outside the morgue wore down the hospital staff guarding the door of its cool-storage room. “Go ahead,” one of the doctors yelled. “Whoever wants to come in and check go ahead.” The flood of people crammed into the room, tossing open body bags and yanking morgue refrigerator doors open. Some stumbled out stunned. Others sobbed.

“Oh God, oh God!” one woman cried. The Reckoning

At the end of Syria’s first week free from the Assad government, the frenzied search for hidden prison cells at Sednaya had dissipated. Instead, people shuffled through prison records scattered across the basement floor, scouring the yellowed pages for the names of loved ones.

A few still hoped they would find some clue that could lead them to their missing relatives, alive. “Maybe they took the prisoners to Iran to use them as bargaining chips with the rebels,” Jamil Ali Al-Abbaa said, rifling through the muddied pages on Thursday evening.

“Or to the Russian military bases,” suggested another, Ahmad al-Aboud, standing nearby.

But most found themselves confronted with a reality they did not want to imagine: The loved ones lost under Mr. al-Assad’s rule were gone forever. The questions that haunted them for decades may never be answered.

“All we wanted was our children. Dead or alive,” said Alya Saloum, 50, whose son disappeared 11 years ago.

“I have no hope left,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times, leading the coverage of the region. More about Christina Goldbaum

Daniel Berehulak is a staff photographer for The Times based in Mexico City. More about Daniel Berehulak