DAMASCUS (AFP) – Determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria’s civil war will be a massive task likely to take years, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
“Identifying the missing and informing the families about their fate is going to be a huge challenge,” ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric told AFP in an interview.
The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of the conflict that started with then-president Bashar al-Assad’s brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Many are believed to have been buried in mass graves after being tortured in Syria’s jails during a war that has killed more than half a million people.
Thousands have been released since rebels ousted Assad last month, but numerous Syrians are still looking for traces of relatives and friends who went missing.
Spoljaric said the ICRC was working with the caretaker authorities, non-governmental organisations and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data on the missing to give families answers as soon as possible. But “the task is enormous,” she said in the interview.
“It will take years to get clarity and to be able to inform everybody concerned. And there will be cases we will never (be able) to identify,” she added.
