Leaked records show mass murder, torture under Syria’s Assad

Ahmet Alrahmo sat awake in his apartment in Waterloo, Ont., eyes fixed on the news coming out of Syria , the country he once called home.

It was December 2024, just hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime . Alrahmo watched as the gates of the notorious Sednaya Prison in Damascus were forced open by opposition forces after more than a decade of civil war. Freed prisoners stumbled into the daylight. Families descended on the country’s jails in a desperate search for their missing loved ones. Mass graves were unearthed across the country.

Every new image brought hope that somewhere in those crowds he would see the unmistakable dimples that marked the smiling face of his eldest son, Omar Alrahmo.

Omar was 22 years old when he vanished in 2013 in Aleppo, minutes after he told