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Regime Accused of Disfiguring Soldiers’ Corpses to Evade Paying Compensation

Assad loyalists claim regime attempted to change identifying features of dead soldiers to avoid paying compensation to families
Regime Accused of Disfiguring Soldiers’ Corpses to Evade Paying Compensation

Families of fallen soldiers have accused the Assad regime of burning the corpses of their children and disfiguring them in order to avoid paying compensation to the soldiers’ families.

Al-Souria Net learned from two families of fallen Syrian army soldiers that the regime is resorting to this behavior because of the large financial deficit it is facing on one hand, and the serious increase in the number of soldiers who are dying on the other.

Our correspondent Yaarib al-Dali met with the father of one of the killed soldiers — who requested to remain anonymous — who said that he “went to identify the body of his son after losing contact with him for over a month. The leader of his son’s brigade told the father to go to the military security hospital and identify his son’s body if it was among the corpses.” He added that “he found a large number of disfigured corpses, most of them with burns that did not show their features.”

The soldier’s father said that: “The number was more than 100 people, and I couldn’t identify my son’s body. I still don’t know if he was killed.” He said that he still has not received documents from the regime authorities for insurance and social affairs in accordance with the “martyr identification” distributed to families.

Our correspondent also spoke with a woman — who also asked not to be named — whose son volunteered for the army after her husband was killed at the start of the clashes between the opposition and regime forces. She said that she lost contact with her son and when she asked about him she was told that he was missing. She added that when she went to the hospital to find out if her son was among the corpses of the soldiers, she was unable to identify anything because of the clear disfigurement of the corpses. The woman said that she still does not know if her son is dead or alive.

Al-Souria Net learned from its sources that the father of one of the dead soldiers made his anger known at one of the hospitals which receive the bodies of the regime soldiers, and accused those responsible for the hospital of hiding the truth of his son’s fate, especially given that his son’s friend informed him that his son was killed by a bullet and transferred to the hospital. The sources said that the father was unable to locate his son’s corpse.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author

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