Hassan Al-Balkhi is one example among thousands whose lives and deaths were turned into suspended administrative files, caught between security agencies, religious courts, civil registries, and lawyers’ offices.
In a country where war has turned death into a recurring bureaucratic procedure, Hassan “died” six times: first in detention, then in security paperwork, then in the Caesar photographs, then in a funeral no one attended, then in legal procedures that classified him as “absent,” and finally in a death certificate that says nothing about how he died, where he was buried, or who killed him.
After the fall of the Assad regime in December 2025, Hassan’s family discovered that the same legal framework once used by the former regime’s security apparatus to absolve itself of torture was also used by the post-Assad courts to officially declare his death.
Thus, absence is reproduced once again: no body, no cause of death, no recognition of martyrdom, and no acknowledgment of one of the gravest war crimes, enforced disappearance.
Hassan’s story raises questions that go beyond one family: how is death counted in a country where tens of thousands were killed outside the law? Who determines death: the judge, the family, the body, or the photograph? And what becomes of transitional justice when state employees administer death through official paperwork in the absence of new laws?
Daraj traces Hassan’s story and speaks with his family.
Hassan Ali Al-Balkhi was born in Damascus in 1977. Originally from Daraa, he was a graduate of a technical institute in electronics and worked as an employee at Damascus International Airport, where he was responsible for security screening of luggage via computer systems.
With the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Hassan became involved in civilian activism. He helped transport aid to areas besieged by the regime in Daraa and contributed to setting up field hospitals. In 2012, he also played a role in facilitating the defection of Riad Hijab, Syria’s former prime minister under Assad.
In an interview with Daraj, his brother Hossam Al-Balkhi recounts that after news of Hassan’s role in Hijab’s defection leaked, Hassan went to Jordan, then returned a month later to continue his activities. He soon began receiving multiple threats. Three days before his arrest, Hossam advised his brother to leave Syria. Hassan replied: “I am a martyr in waiting.”
The First Death
On 19 February 2013, Hassan was at his father’s home in a Damascus suburb (formerly Al-Assad Suburb) when the house was raided. Hassan was arrested, and security forces confiscated two computers, four mobile phones, and a Thuraya satellite phone. These details were corroborated by the building’s doorman, who confirmed that Hassan was the specific target of the arrest, not detained as part of a routine search, as security forces went directly to his apartment.
Like thousands detained by Syria’s security services, Hassan then disappeared, marking the beginning of his family’s search for him. Hossam recounts how their elderly mother went from one security branch to another in Damascus, all of which denied holding Hassan. This long ordeal eventually led the family to deal with a lawyer who promised to secure Hassan’s release in exchange for $25,000.
The family managed to raise the amount, but, as Hossam puts it, the lawyer “took the money and then began to evade us.” He adds that “the lawyer did not disappear because he was protected by the security branches.” He was another broker among the many “detainee middlemen” who turned the hope of families of detainees and the forcibly disappeared into a business, whether independently or in coordination with the security services, which are estimated to have collected around $900 million through such schemes.
The Second Death
Hossam Al-Balkhi’s family lost around 40 relatives in the branches of the Assad regime. Even so, they did not lose hope of finding Hassan and continued searching until March 2015, when Hassan’s mother managed to visit the Military Police branch in Qaboun.
There, by sheer coincidence, one of the assistants took pity on her. He pulled out her son’s file, tore a piece of paper from a desk calendar, no bigger than half the palm of a hand, and wrote down her son’s fate.
On the note, the assistant wrote that Hassan’s mother should go to Al-Mujtahid Hospital in Damascus to obtain a death notification, stating that Hassan had died on 12 October 2013—nearly eight months after his arrest.
Hossam says that when Hassan’s personal belongings, his ID, passport, and other items, were confiscated on the day of his arrest, they included a leather bag containing multiple keys. At the Military Police branch, alongside the handwritten “death note,” the assistant handed Hassan’s mother her son’s “personal effects,” which amounted to what Hossam described as “a pile of metal,” referring to the keys.
At that moment, Hassan’s mother said to the assistant who gave her the keys: “You took my son and melted him into metal, and you returned only a pile of iron. Go… may God not forgive you.”
After this “news,” Hassan’s father and Hossam suffered severe psychological distress. There was no official death certificate, no body, only a scrap of paper with no cause of death. At the time, the Syrian regime was refusing to issue official death certificates; when it did, causes of death were often recorded as “heart attack” or “natural causes,” as documented by multiple investigative reports and international findings.
Hassan’s family refused to obtain an official death certificate. As Hossam explains: “We refused to grant the regime absolution by acknowledging that it was not responsible for Hassan’s death.” At the same time, there was still hope that he might be alive. Stories were circulating then of detainees for whom official death certificates had been issued, only for it to later emerge that they were still alive.
The Third Death
As Hassan’s mother continued her search for her son, the Caesar photographs were leaked and made public, thousands of images of detainees who died under torture. The release of the photos sparked both hope and terror for many Syrians. Everyone who had lost a loved one embarked on a long, agonizing search through the images. Hassan’s family was among those who spent months sifting through photographs of corpses.
Hossam says that searching through the images “was like a knife stabbing the heart… a blade driven in between one photo and the next.” Every face reopened the possibility of finding a missing relative or detainee. One night, Hossam recalls, his brother in Saudi Arabia sent him a photo. Hossam looked at it, but his mind initially refused to accept that the person in the image was Hassan. He denied it at first, clinging to hope, then realized: “This is my brother.”
Hossam contacted the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD), providing them with information about his brother and old photographs of him. The association responded and sent him four images. The family saw Hassan’s body, nearly naked, bearing clear signs of torture. They were able to match the teeth in the photographs with an older image of Hassan’s teeth, concluding with 90 to 95 percent certainty that the body was his. The small remaining margin of doubt sustained the family’s hope for a long time.
In refusal to absolve the Assad regime, the family did not obtain an official death certificate and instead held a modest condolence gathering at the father’s home, the same house from which Hassan had been arrested. None of the neighbors attended. Meanwhile, the family held memorial services in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The Fourth Death
Hossam and Hassan’s father died in 2023, before the fall of the regime. His dream was to see Assad overthrown, Syria freed, and those responsible for the arrest of his family members brought to trial. He had lost a son, a brother, and six nephews. After his death, the family was confronted with inheritance procedures, raising the question once again: should they legally declare Hassan dead or not?
Once more, the family refused to register Hassan’s death or obtain a death certificate, so as not to absolve the regime of responsibility for their son’s killing. They agreed that Hassan would remain “alive” in official records and that the inheritance would be settled accordingly.
The Fifth Death
The Assad regime fell on 8 December 2024. Detention centers were opened, state institutions began to function again to some extent, and Hassan’s siblings started visiting Syria after 13 years in exile. At that point, the family decided to reclaim their son’s rights and officially register his death.
In Izraa, in Daraa, the family appointed a lawyer for a fee of $150, an amount Hossam describes as substantial for any Syrian family with a limited income, especially given that 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line according to the latest statistics. Once the lawyer took on the “case,” legal obstacles emerged. Hassan could only be officially declared dead by being classified as “absent,” as the Sharia judge confirmed to Hossam and his family.
This method of declaring death is based on a set of legal procedures used by the Assad regime to deflect accusations of killing under torture from its security institutions, a practice documented by numerous human rights reports. This approach relies first on Decree No. 315 issued by Bashar al-Assad in 2016, which designates Syrian territory as “areas of military operations as of 15 March 2011.” It then draws on Circular No. 22, issued in 2022 by the regime’s Ministry of Justice, which set out “procedures for handling lawsuits related to the confirmation of death before Sharia courts,” including the requirement to obtain “security approval.”
The confirmation of death is based on Article 205 of the Personal Status Law, which stipulates “ruling the death of a missing person due to military operations or similar cases stipulated in the applicable military laws, where death is the most likely outcome, after four years have passed since the date of disappearance.”
In a 2022 report, the Syrian Network for Human Rights concluded that Circular No. 22 “opens the door for families of victims to declare their children dead, but under the supervision and monitoring of the security services, and by citing an untrue cause of death. It becomes impossible to issue a death certificate stating that the Syrian regime detained a victim who died under torture in its detention centers, or that a victim was killed by the regime’s barrel bombs or chemical weapons.”
Hassan’s family began the legal process to obtain a death certificate before the Sharia judge in Izraa. According to Hossam, they drafted a police report detailing the full story of Hassan’s arrest and submitted the leaked Caesar photograph as evidence; in other words, the family presented the full written account outlined above. After the legal procedures and court case were concluded, the family received the Sharia judge’s ruling. That was when the shock came.
The judge’s ruling was based on Decree No. 315 issued by Bashar al-Assad in 2016, the provisions of Circular No. 22 issued by the Syrian regime’s Ministry of Justice, and Article 205, which the Assad regime had used to declare missing persons and detainees dead. In the Sharia judge’s decision, Hassan was deemed “dead as of the day following the completion of four years since his disappearance,” after obtaining a “movement record” to confirm that he had not left the country.
The ruling further stated that on 19 February 2013, Hassan “left his home heading to work and did not return, despite the liberation of the country and the prisons, and that members of the former regime arrested him.” Accordingly, he was “considered legally dead” and officially declared deceased on 20 February 2017.
The Sixth Death
The judge’s decision to declare Hassan dead contains multiple contradictions. Foremost among them is its reliance on a legal mechanism previously used by the Assad regime, particularly Circular No. 22, which the Syrian Network for Human Rights described at the time of its issuance as pushing families themselves to “register their relatives as deceased, to relinquish knowing how they died, who killed them, when, and where their bodies are.”
The decision also retained phrases such as “the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Armed Forces,” omitted the story of Hassan’s arrest and the Caesar photograph, and classified him as a missing person who died four years after his disappearance, without stating that he was killed under torture. Most importantly, from Hossam’s perspective, Hassan was not recognized as a “martyr”, a practice he described as “absolving the Assad regime for a second time.”
What is also striking is that the summary of the police report stated that the investigation into Hassan’s death attributed it to his “abduction by elements of the former regime and his disappearance in the prisons of the former regime in 2013.” This account is supported by witness statements in the report, which note that “no evidence was found that he was alive,” and that he “went missing from the house in Al-Assad Suburb, where he was arrested.”
By contrast, the judge’s ruling states that Hassan “left his home” and did not return, and that it is “widely believed that elements of the former regime arrested him.”
Commenting on these minor discrepancies in the legal process, the criminal procedures, and the absence of any reference to the Caesar photograph, Hossam says: “The decision contradicts itself. It speaks of the fallen Assad regime, yet relies on Bashar al-Assad’s decrees.” He adds: “This is how they killed my brother a second time. It is an insult. Hassan was not treated as a special case, nor were the other forcibly disappeared whose families chose to declare them dead. He was not recognized as a martyr.”
The family then proceeded to obtain an official death certificate from the civil registry. There, officials asked for Hassan’s personal ID, the same ID that the police report explicitly states was confiscated by Assad’s security forces at the time of his arrest. The civil registry rejected this explanation. Hossam says: “It was humiliating. They refused to issue the death certificate unless we obtained a police report confirming the loss of the ID, so that Hassan could be registered as deceased in the civil records. These routine bureaucratic procedures are degrading.”
In the end, the family obtained the death certificate. It did not state a cause of death, and listed the place of death as “Al-Assad Suburb,” retaining the old name of the neighborhood rather than its new designation. The issuing authority was recorded as a “Sharia court,” based on a “judicial decision.”
In addition to all of the above, Hossam tells us about the difficulties the family faced, especially Hassan’s mother, who followed the case herself. He points to transportation expenses, various “fees,” physical exhaustion, and, most importantly in his words, “the psychological torment of obtaining a piece of paper that humiliates her son.”
The Capital of Death
After the fall of the regime and the emptying of Assad’s detention centers, the Syrian Network for Human Rights announced that the number of missing and forcibly disappeared under Assad reached 112,000. Such a figure, should a transitional justice process begin, raises serious questions about the cost of the administrative and legal procedures required to determine the fate of the missing and forcibly disappeared. For now, however, the process remains unchanged. A lawyer in Damascus, who has worked on several cases involving the “issuance of death certificates,” explains how it works.
The lawyer says that in addition to legal fees and transportation costs incurred in obtaining security approvals and the required paperwork from various branches and departments, there are administrative costs totaling around $25. These include “approximately 100,000 Syrian pounds for stamps and the official transaction, and the cost of two powers of attorney, each valued at 100,000 Syrian pounds,” since declaring death before a Sharia judge involves lawsuits filed by heirs against one another. In Hassan’s case, Hossam was formally listed as his mother’s legal adversary.
The lawyer confirms that procedures remain exactly as they were under the fallen regime: reliance on Circular No. 22 and Article 205 of the Personal Status Law, with no changes made. Death is still registered by classifying the person as “absent.” The same documents must still be obtained from the “security branches” to complete the process, which the lawyer describes as “routine, bureaucratic, and pointless.”
As in Hassan’s case, the lawyer adds, the judge’s ruling does not mention the arrest, its cause, or proof of death under torture, even when evidence such as a Caesar photograph exists. He explains this as “an attempt to create internal and political stability without addressing the personal injustices Syrians face.” He adds: “The current procedures obstruct any future accountability process, whether transitional justice laws are adopted or not, because there is no clear evidence of the crime in the death ruling. Moreover, the missing person is not recognized as a martyr, to avoid granting them and their families the administrative and financial benefits accorded to martyrs.”
Response from the Missing Persons Authority
We contacted the Ministry of Justice but had received no response at the time of publication. We also reached out to the National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, posing questions about the legal process for obtaining a death certificate and whether special procedures exist for families who choose to declare a forcibly disappeared relative deceased. The response from the office of the head of the National Commission for the Missing was as follows:
“We confirm that all of the questions and legal challenges you have raised are indeed under study and consideration by the Commission. We are currently working on drafting an initial version of a Missing Persons Law, in partnership and consultation with families of the missing, family associations, Syrian civil society, the Ministry of Justice, the Bar Association, as well as national and international academics and experts, and relevant international institutions. This law aims to address the legal and humanitarian dimensions of the issue of missing persons, to ensure the protection of families’ rights and the provision of reparations, in line with international standards and their actual needs.”
