シーザーの写真に写っていた6,786人の大半は、ダマスカス市内にある5つの諜報機関支部に拘禁され、遺体はその後市内の少なくとも2つの軍病院に移送された。病院への移送の期間は、シーザーが写真ファイルをコピーして職場から持ち出し始めた2011年5月から、シリア国外に脱出した2013年8月までだ。「人権のためのシリア・ネットワーク（Syrian Network for Human Rights）」は2011年3月以来、シリアで逮捕・拘禁された11万7,000人超を記録し続けている。
Ahmad al-Musalmani (Child), Victim from the Photographs
On August 2, 2012, when Ahmad was 14, he returned to Syria from Lebanon, where his family had sent him for safety reasons, to attend his mother’s funeral. He was traveling in a minibus with five other people.
An officer at a checkpoint took the passengers’ phones and found an anti-Assad song on Ahmad’s. The officer dragged Ahmad into a small room at the checkpoint, a fellow passenger told the family a day later. The rest of the passengers continued on in the minibus without him.
Ahmad’s uncle, Dahi al-Musalmani, was a judge for 20 years before he fled the country in March 2013. Dahi told Human Rights Watch that he went to see several government officials after Ahmad’s disappearance. He learned that Ahmad was likely in Air Force Intelligence custody, and paid more than US$14,000 in bribes attempting to secure Ahmad’s release, unsuccessfully. He eventually fled to Jordan after family members told him he was wanted for arrest.
When the Caesar photographs were released, Dahi searched for Ahmad among them:
I went directly to the folder of the Air Force Intelligence, and I found him. [he breaks down while talking] It was a shock. Oh, it was the shock of my life to see him here. I looked for him, 950 days I looked for him. I counted each day. When his mother was dying, she told me: ‘I leave him under your protection.’ What protection could I give?
Rehab al-Allawi, Victim from the Photographs
Rehab al-Allawi, a Damascus resident originally from Deir al-Zor, was an engineering student at Damascus University before the uprising in Syria. Hers was the only photograph of a woman, among the Caesar photographs of detainees’ bodies.
Rehab was about 25 when the Raids Brigade, a special unit of the military police, arrested her on January 17, 2013. Rehab worked in one of Damascus’s local coordination committees – loose networks of activists – assisting internally displaced people who had fled Homs.
After her arrest, the family sought information through personal contacts within the Syrian government. They paid more than US$18,000 to various officials in the Syrian military and security services to try to get information about her and to secure her release but their attempts did not succeed.
A former detainee, Hanadi, told Human Rights Watch that she was detained with Rehab for more than three weeks in the 215 Branch Military Intelligence facility.
“We spent 24 days together in the cell, next to each other,” Hanadi said. “She wanted to see her parents. She would always speak about her brothers and sisters. She was scared for her family.”
Hanadi was transferred to Adra Prison after three and a half weeks. She never saw Rehab again.
In March 2015, after the Caesar photographs were published online, a cousin called the family and asked if Rehab’s photo might be among those released. “She looks just like Rehab,” the cousin said.
Though the family recognized Rehab, they asked former detainees who had seen Rehab in prison for confirmation, as her appearance had changed during her detention.
Hanadi said:
One day her brother called me and asked me if it was Rehab in the photographs that were published…. I recognized the pajamas she was wearing, and her face. Even the shape of her toes was the same.
Quotes from Former Detainees in Same Facility as Many Caesar Victims
“If you took pictures of the detainees now, you would see people who looked like those that are in the Caesar photographs, only they would be alive….The ones who died are the lucky ones.” –Dr. Sami, former 215 Branch detainee
“When I went inside the cell, someone knew me. When he lifted his head, [I saw] his teeth were broken. He was severely, severely emaciated. He had very weak and short hair. I said, ‘You know me?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’m your nephew Mohammed. I’m the one with the supermarket next to your clinic.’ He started to cry. He hadn’t seen himself, he’d been detained for ten and a half months.” –Dr. Karim Mamoun, former 215 Branch detainee
Quotes from Defectors
“I know this place from the photographs stone by stone, brick by brick. I lived there 24 hours a day. I had to carry [the bodies] myself.” –Suleiman Ali (not his real name), former conscript who worked at the 601 Military Hospital
“When the corpses arrive, [the forensic doctor, who is also an army officer] asks how many corpses there are, and then she asks [conscripts] to wrap them up. She gives each body a third number on a bandage. She writes on the register: the number of detainee, the branch number, and the hospital number [examination number]. Then they are put in the [morgue] refrigerator.” –Fahed al-Mahmoud (not his real name), military defector who served at the Harasta Military Hospital in Damascus and witnessed bodies being registered
