Assad’s machinery of disappearance
CIJA and SiT reveal new evidence from Syrian intelligence archives

The phenomenon of missing persons in Syria remains one of the darkest and most complex legacies of the country’s civil war. With over 130,000 individuals still unaccounted for, the ouster of Bashar Assad in December 2024 has opened an unprecedented window for truth-seeking and accountability. A new report, a joint effort by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) and Syria in Transition, leverages newly accessed internal documents from Syrian intelligence archives to shed critical light on the operational, bureaucratic, and systemic nature of enforced disappearances and the regime’s policy of denial — with a particular focus on the role and culpability of the Military Intelligence Department (MID).

Between November 2024 and March 2025, Syria in Transition gathered 54 original documents — telegrams, memos, and internal circulars — issued by Syria’s MID, popularly known as Military Security (al-amn al-askari.) These span periods before, during, and after the height of the war, with a focus on the years 2011 to 2013, 2016-2019, and 2021-2024. CIJA analysts carried out a verification and authentication review of the documents, including cross-referencing them with over one million documents along with thousands of witness testimonies gathered by CIJA’s Syrian investigators since 2012.

Architecture of control: Military Intelligence Department
Documents reveal that from the start of the 2011 uprising, MID received orders from the highest chains of command to conduct surveillance and mass arrests, with a clear focus on unarmed protesters, opposition members, and those supporting foreign media outlets. Checkpoints, raids, and sweeping arrests fed individuals into a detention system devoid of legal safeguards. As the conflict wore on and became entrenched, routine judicial procedures — already compromised by a judiciary that functioned as an instrument of the regime — were regularly bypassed in favour of indefinite detention, as documents collected by SiT show.

Records held by CIJA document that a large number of detainees died in MID custody, and that the MID avoided releasing the bodies to their families due to the physical appearance of the corpses — a result of torture, neglect, and decomposition. On 18 December 2012, with military morgues overwhelmed by the number of bodies, the MID disseminated instructions based on a letter from the National Security Bureau — the highest coordinating body for the various intelligence agencies — dated 3 December. These discussed the issue of decomposition, bad smells, and provided steps for handling the bodies. 

Hospitals were ordered to prepare an immediate preliminary medical report on the cause of death, which was to be presented to the head of MID alongside a branch report summarising the detainee’s arrest and the findings of their interrogation. Based on these materials, the head of MID was required to issue a same-day decision on whether the body would be released to the family. While the nominal rule was to allow release, the instructions included two exceptions that highlight the calculated arbitrariness of the Assadist system: if deemed a “necessity” (without qualification) or if retaining the body could “ensure security benefits.” A memorandum from Branch 248 to the head of MID, dated 27 August 2013, expanded the conditions under which the bodies of deceased detainees could be withheld, proposing that corpses be denied to families known to support “terrorism.” The document references an earlier memo from 9 May, indicating the policy had already been in effect by that point.

None of these instructions required that families be informed of the cause or location of death, despite such records being available. The stated purpose of these formalised procedures was not to prevent further deaths or to hold anyone accountable, but to “preserve judicial immunity” for MID personnel and “avert the liability of Department staff before judiciary authority in the future.”

The practice of silence: systematic non-disclosure
Documents from the MID, Air Force Intelligence, and General Intelligence collected by Syria in Transition further expose the regime’s longstanding policy of withholding information about detainees — both living and deceased. Testimonies, including from the UN Commission of Inquiry, indicate that such policies were in place from the early stages of the conflict. More recent documents (2018-2024) confirm the continuation of these policies and how the regime’s broader policy of restricting information extended to its own state institutions.

A circular from the General Intelligence Directorate Branch 285, dated 27 February 2018, instructed all subordinate branches not to disclose any information about deceased detainees, including their status, whereabouts, or cause of death, to any external parties. All inquiries were to be met with a standardised denial: “the detainee is not listed in our records.” A 30 September 2019 circular from MID Branch 248, later referenced in a 17 September 2022 telegram, reiterated that no information was to be shared under any circumstances without the explicit approval of the Head of MID. A 17 March 2024 directive from MID leadership clarified that this applied equally to living detainees.

An earlier telegram from MID Branch 291 dated 27 June 2018 instructed Branch 293 to refer detainees to military courts but included the caveat that decisions had to be made based on security and military interests. If MID decided not to proceed, detainees could simply vanish from the judicial system altogether. A separate circular issued by Air Force Intelligence Branch 259 on 16 April 2017 ordered that detainees could be returned to Air Force Intelligence custody even if a court had issued their release. These directives demonstrate how broadly defined “security considerations” consistently overrode formal legal procedures. 

Documents also highlight the consequences for breaching these secrecy policies. Several circulars warn that failure to comply would result in severe penalties, with individual branch heads held personally responsible. A circular from MID Branch 291/4 on 5 July 2019 noted that information on deceased detainees was being published online, backed by clear evidence obtained by the “committee for justice and accountability” — likely referring to CIJA, which had disclosed internal regime documents in two separate forums in the preceding months. 

In January 2019, a US federal court had found the Syrian regime liable for the extrajudicial killing of British-American journalist Marie Colvin in Homs in February 2012, relying on evidence and expert witness analysis provided by CIJA, including the submission of over 190 internal regime documents. In August the previous year, CIJA had also revealed three documents issued by Military Intelligence branches as part of a Channel 4 video exposé on missing persons in Syria. These documents showed that the Head of Military Intelligence was briefed, at his own request, on every detainee death.

The MID circular shows that the regime was aware its own records were being used to support legal accountability efforts and sought to punish the unauthorised disclosure of such documents, rather than address the underlying crimes they revealed. The circular warned that leaks “reflect negatively on the reputation of the MID” and could serve as grounds for legal action against the regime in international courts. It ordered strict confidentiality measures and threatened “the most severe punishments” for those responsible for unauthorised disclosures. 

Disappearance as doctrine: detention, duration, and obfuscation
The CIJA/SiT report also unpacks how detention periods were manipulated to enable enforced disappearance. A 2005 circular reveals the long-standing dual-track system: while ‘ordinary’ criminal suspects had detention time limits of 24 hours without judicial approval, individuals accused of political or security offenses were subject to “customary arrest orders” without duration caps. Five months into the uprising, in June 2011, this grey zone was further entrenched. A circular from MID Branch 294 referenced a National Security Bureau memo directing that demonstrators be charged with more serious crimes such as terrorism, sabotage, or conspiracy in order to exploit Decree No. 55 (April 2011), which amended Article 17 of the Syrian Code of Criminal Procedures to allow for detention of up to 60 days without judicial review. By 2016, this practice had further deteriorated: a telegram from MID authorised the indefinite detention of “dangerous” individuals, with their detention renewable every three months on the grounds of ongoing investigation.

The cumulative effect of these measures was to build a system that not only detained individuals arbitrarily, but disappeared them deliberately — outside of legal scrutiny, without access to family, legal counsel, or due process. The report reveals the regime’s machinery of disappearance not as a chaotic by-product of war, but as a well-thought out and highly organised state policy. It aims to support future legal proceedings and broader truth-seeking efforts, as part of the comprehensive transitional justice process essential for genuine reconciliation in Syria.