In an interview charged with passion and professionalism, investigative journalist Jamal Al -Maliki, presenter of the “Al -Muhtar” program on Al -Jazeera, revealed shocking details about his journey to Syria after the fall of Bashar al -Assad’s regime, who saw that his crimes exceeded every limit.
Al -Maliki examined the scenes of the systematic terror that the regime practiced over the years, and documented crimes described as the most terrible in the history of the modern state, and reviewed as part of this in a new episode of the “Bodcast Mashqari” program that was broadcast on the Atheer platforms and Al -Jazeera 360 (Full episode link).
The investigative journalist said that the stories in Syria do not need someone to chase them, but rather the journalist in every corner, from the images of the missing on the walls to the children’s looks at the care centers.
He explained that every story tells one fact: there was a system that could not be visualized by its evil except when examining its actual product.
Al -Maliki stressed that his entry into Syria was not a search for a championship, but rather as a fertile environment for any investigative journalist, describing the moment he arrived in Damascus a month after the fall of the regime that it was greater than his expectations and more cruelty than what he read about totalitarianism.
He considered that what the Assad regime did cannot be reduced to terms such as “tyranny” or “dictatorship”, describing these vocabulary as “romantic” compared to the reality of systematic crimes.
Series of death
Al -Maliki saw that what distinguishes the ugliness of the Syrian regime is that he was not only killed, but “he founded an accurate administrative system for the production of death,” noting that every official institution turned into a link in the series of death, and the most prominent example of this – according to it – is to convert hospice into security offices that legislate death and do not seek to save it.
He stated that during his work, he obtained the upcoming investigative film entitled “The Death Industry” on official documents showing how doctors were the causes of death by security branches officers, and the names of the dead were recorded with unknown numbers, while the victims are prevented from pronouncing even in their last moments inside the hospital.
Al -Maliki revealed that there are more than 5900 pictures of the bodies of detainees who were documented with accurate medical evidence, in which the victims appeared, and they either suffocated by plastic tools or directly in the head.
He said that these images are subject to an accurate analysis within the film, stressing that documenting the crime was part of the regime’s behavior, not out of fear of accountability, but to confirm its authority.
He stated that the “Al -Muhtar” team also obtained a security database that includes information about more than a million detainees that include the investigation records and the fingerprints of the detainees, which enables the families of missing persons to follow the fate of their children accurately, describing these data as a “human treasure” that will be employed, not only to detect, but also to fairness of the victims.
Shocking moments
In one of the most shocking moments, Maliki talked about his visit to infants care centers who were transferred by security branches to the role of the state.
He said that he entered a room with about 20 infants who are not known, some of whom were children of political opponents who were arrested, while others are the product of rape inside the detention centers, all of whom were recorded unidentified.
He added that the scene inside the room was sufficient to “drop a planet”, as he put it, as children accumulated on the ground and in the beds, some of them laugh, and others cry, while their eyes were chasing the entrants in silence loaded with questions, and said, “I was unable to photograph, so I sat in the car for half an hour I was trying to absorb what I saw.”
Al -Maliki pointed out that there are documents confirming that these infants were deliberately recorded without mentioning the name of the father or mother despite their knowledge, describing this as a “identity crime” that may be used later to recruit them or justify the behavior of the repressive system in the future.
He said that these policies reveal that the regime was not only killed, but was planning for a future based on blurring and denial, and explained that there are documented cases of women who were imprisoned with their grandchildren, only because one of their children was a political opposition.
He mentioned the story of a woman who was imprisoned with her grandchildren, while the older child heard his mother’s voice and grandmother under torture, so he tried to raise his voice to prevent his brothers from hearing what is happening, an incident that highlights the depth of the psychological destruction practiced by the regime.
Group graves
Speaking of mass graves, Al -Maliki referred to his visit to a mass burial site, where a rectangle of tens of meters was found in which hundreds of victims were buried, while the remaining part was not completed due to the fall of the regime.
He said, “Death was a running action until the last moment, and the tombs were waiting for more bodies had it not been for political change.”
He highlighted that workers in public cemeteries were aware that watching the burial process put them in danger, as two of the custody of the Cemetery disappeared after they tried to save a night burial.
He considered that every Syrian employee, under this system, transformed – or Abi – to a partner in the crime or a potential victim of it.
When asked about how to balance the human motives and professional work, Al -Maliki said that the investigation does not ask the journalist to be without a conscience, but rather to collect the documents with a systematic cold, even if the motivation is emotional, adding, “The passion gives the film his soul, but the document is what keeps him alive in the archive of the truth.”
He revealed that the new movie will be the first series of films that are achieved in chemical, looted money and assassinations files, in addition to wide documentation projects that seek to expose the system through field work and comparison between sources.
Al -Maliki stressed that documenting these crimes is not a journalistic luxury, but rather a moral and historical duty, and said that it is in the interest of the Syrians to document what happened so that the killers do not return and do not spoil the future, indicating that the real press expanded the margin of freedom and besiege tyranny, even if it was with the document, not with a gun.