‘They broke his neck’: Families of Syria’s disappeared still seek closure

Damascus, Syria – By the time the red sun slipped beyond the horizon, the playground was empty except for one little girl, nine-year-old Fouziah Alalawi, who stood staring at the bend where her father always appeared to pick her up from school.

It was February 20, 2013, and war had become the background of her childhood: the distant thunder of shelling, the sharp percussion of gunfire, and the sudden quiet that made the adults tense.

That evening, Fouziah was left alone at the school gates. When she walked to her mother’s office, Somayah Alsaaed understood before her daughter spoke. Her husband, Mohammed, 43, had been taken.

The family had already been displaced once from their homes in al-Maliha, the nearby town that had recently fallen under the control of the opposition Free Syrian