Juicy bribes and systematic extortion. After the regime's fall, numerous Syrian families are testifying about how they were milked for large sums to see their imprisoned loved ones again – or just to find out where they were.
In many cases, it was all in vain.
Sanaa Omar has been going from prison to morgue in Damascus since the regime's fall, searching for her brother. The family in Aleppo has been searching since 2011, when he disappeared at the age of 15.
We paid everyone, says Omar.
Every year, her dad would travel to Damascus and meet with lawyers or others who claimed to work with the government. They would take up to 400,000 Syrian pounds, equivalent to around 340 Swedish kronor, for information about the brother.
They said: "You'll get to meet him in a month". We waited one, two, three months ... but we never got a visit pass. We paid them for almost five years, but eventually gave up.
A million for release
The regime in Damascus and its supporters are believed to have earned hundreds of millions from the relatives' hopes. In 2022, a Syrian rights organization estimated that the regime and its supporters had taken in nearly ten billion kronor.
Hassan Hashem, whose brother was sent to the military prison Saydnaya in 2019, tells how the family paid bribes equivalent to over 130,000 kronor. "He'll be released today", "he'll be released tomorrow", the guards claimed. In the end, the family got in touch with a high-ranking official within the regime.
He said they needed 100,000 dollars to get him out. I replied that I wouldn't even be able to gather 100,000 if I sold my entire village. Where would I get those sums?
"Just lies"
66-year-old Ayoush Hassan bribed her way to the news that her son was doing well and was in Saydnaya in November. Now she's there and searching.
He's not here, she cries out in anger and despair.
They lied to us. We've lived on hope for 13 years, believed that he would come home this month, the coming months, this year, on Mother's Day ... It was all just lies.
Since the Arab Spring in 2011, when large protests against al-Assad's harsh rule broke out, hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have been arrested and imprisoned in the country.
Many of those released from prison have been freed only after bribes from relatives. Omar Alshogre, who has lived in Sweden since 2015, has, for example, testified about how his mom bribed a prison guard with 15,000 dollars to get her son released.
