Syria’s National Commission for the Missing announced that it had reached what it described as “reliable and corroborated” findings, allowing it to conclude with a high degree of professional certainty that the six children of Dr. Rania al-Abbasi, arrested with her by the former Syrian regime in 2013, have died.

The commission said in a statement today, Saturday, 30 May, that confirmation of the deaths came after a series of verification and analysis procedures it conducted in coordination with the relevant national authorities, noting that the findings came within the framework of its legal mandate and national responsibility to work toward uncovering the fate of missing persons in Syria.

It explained that these findings were not announced to the public before members of the family concerned were informed, in line with a humanitarian and professional protocol that respects the family’s right to know as a fundamental priority and preserves their dignity and psychological safety.

The commission confirmed that the conclusions reached were based on a set of investigations, data, and corroborated analyses that underwent review and evaluation according to approved professional standards, while noting that efforts to locate the remains and determine their whereabouts are still ongoing in coordination with the relevant authorities.

The commission stressed that it will not publish any visual materials or information that could harm the dignity of the children or violate the family’s privacy, given the extreme humanitarian sensitivity of the case and its connection to children who have been missing for many years.

It also called on media outlets and the public to handle the case with the highest degree of responsibility and respect for human dignity, and to refrain from circulating any undocumented materials or information that could harm the dignity of the victims or violate the family’s privacy.

The National Commission for the Missing renewed its commitment to continuing work to uncover the fate of missing persons in Syria through a professional, humanitarian, and legal methodology that places the dignity of victims, the rights of families, and their right to know at the forefront of its priorities.

In its statement, the commission confirmed that it would continue carrying out its responsibilities toward all families of missing persons in Syria, in a way that safeguards their right to know and preserves the dignity of victims and their relatives.

Years of Enforced Absence

Rania al-Abbasi’s case is considered one of the most prominent cases of enforced disappearance in Syria over the past years.

Al-Abbasi, a dentist and former Syrian and Arab chess champion, was arrested with her six children from her home in the Dummar neighborhood of Damascus on 11 March 2013, two days after the arrest of her husband, Dr. Abdulrahman Yasin. News of the family members has been completely cut off since then.

According to documentation by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, members of the former regime’s Military Intelligence took the family members to an unknown location, after which all news of them was cut off, with no confirmed information about their fate or places of detention.

The six children were between one and 14 years old when they were arrested, while Amnesty International said al-Abbasi and her husband were arrested over their provision of humanitarian aid to displaced families from the city of Homs during the years of the conflict.

Over the past years, the case of al-Abbasi and her family turned into a symbol of the detainees and forcibly disappeared file in Syria. It also became a focus of rights and international campaigns demanding that the fate of her and her family members be revealed, after they remained among the missing for more than a decade.

3,700 Missing Children

The case of Rania al-Abbasi’s children comes within a broader context linked to children forcibly disappeared in Syria.

On 23 January 2025, the Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the enforced disappearance of around 3,700 children by the Syrian regime since March 2011, confirming that the fate of most of them remains unknown despite the fall of the Assad regime.

The network called for an urgent investigation into associations and institutions that received children from security agencies during the years of the conflict, noting that the Syrian regime followed detention policies that affected thousands of children, whether with their families or separately. Reports also emerged about the transfer of children born inside detention centers to orphanages and care centers.

According to the network, some institutions, including SOS, received numbers of children without documents proving their identities. These practices continued until 2019, before the institution introduced changes to admission mechanisms and required identifying information about the children.

Over the past years, the official page of Rania al-Abbasi’s family repeatedly called for revealing the fate of the family members and opening an official investigation to determine the children’s whereabouts and clarify the circumstances of their disappearance, amid continued ambiguity that surrounded the case for more than a decade.