How much does hope cost? For many Syrian families the price was counted in tens of thousands of dollars โ which many were willing to pay for signs that a missing friend or relative was still alive in Syria's vast prison system.
A trove of pictures from a Syrian police defector proved otherwise. There are 11,000 victims, documented in high resolution, the bodies carefully cataloged with coded numbers inked on every corpse.
The revelations have disrupted a widespread business in Syria โ one that tells a disturbing story about a society at war.
It was a business I kept hearing about on trips to southern Turkey. Syrians told me stories about security police who offered scraps of information about the missing ... for a price.
Families paid to find out where someone was held, for extra food, for better treatment โ for prisoners who were already dead.
Click the audio link above to hear more about extortion and war brokers; see below for more information on the photos that revealed this fraud.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDAzMjM2NDYzMDEyMzc1Njk5NjAxNzY3OQ001))
