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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

@bdeeb.bsky.social

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Digital investigations @lhreports.bsky.social Free Syria He\him

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · Dec 8

VICTORY 🧵
Congratulations to every Syrian who fought tirelessly for this moment: the peaceful protesters, the Free Syrian Army fighters, the detainees who paid the heaviest price among us, and the heroes of the White Helmets who gave us hope in our darkest hours.

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

This was a @lighthousereports.com led investigation with BBC, SIRAJ, Women Who Won The War, Trouw, Der Spiegel. You can find find all the publications on this link
www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

Syria’s Stolen Children

Under the Assad regime, hundreds of Syrian children were hidden in orphanages to extort their parents. Families still have few answers from the new government or the international charity that kept it...

www.lighthousereports.com

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Today, 100s of families are still searching for answers about their missing children. Our 9 month investigation, interviewing over 100 witnesses, survivors, and staff, and gathering official documents to reveal how Syria’s children were stolen and how international silence enabled this tragedy.

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Local orphanages had no power to defy the regime, yet SOS Villages in Syria did—and failed to use it. Despite knowing the truth since 2017, the organization stayed silent until the regime collapsed.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Desperate families paid bribes and chased rumors for any news, while official denials and fake papers kept them from their children. Care workers who tried to help faced threats and even detention by intelligence agencies.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Children like Fawaz described systematic abuse at the hands of orphanage staff: physical punishment, interrogation, forced labor, deprivation, and intimidation. Some were denied food for minor infractions or had their skin burned with hot objects.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Abuse did not end at forced separation. Fawaz, who was 11 when separated from his mother and grandmother, was sent with his two younger siblings to Dar al-Rahma, an orphanage in Damascus. There, he endured harsh physical punishments, threats, and was forced to work for long hours

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

At the time, SOS Syria was run by the daughter of a senior Assad associate, compromising decisions about the children’s welfare. SOS collaborated with the regime in hiding 139 detainees’ children from their parents.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

We discovered that as early as 2017, whistleblowers within SOS raised concerns about these “security referrals,” but the leadership failed to intervene or inform the children’s families. As one senior SOS officer put it: “Senior executives didn’t want to know the details and hid away from action.”

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Shockingly, a €1.6 billion international charity helped enable this machinery. SOS Children’s Villages, a respected organization funded globally, quietly complied with Syrian intelligence orders—accepting children from security agencies and concealing their existence.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Our investigation built a database of +320 children treated this way, their identities and fates kept secret in official documents. Many were from families accused of opposing the Assad regime or related to dissidents and defectors.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

This was no accident. For years, Syria's security services systematically used children as bargaining chipsand by detaining them, hiding them in orphanages, and cutting off their families to gain leverage in negotiations with the opposition.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

Mohammad wasn’t the only child taken. His cousins Leila and Layan were also arrested with their parents, detained by security forces, and eventually transferred to the SOS Children’s Villages network—separated from their family, their names, and everything familiar.

Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · 27d

At just a few days old, little Mohammad Ghbeis was detained inside the ICU in Damascus, his first days were marked by detention, not nurture. He was quickly moved from the ICU to an orphanage, and later to SOS Children Villages. All while his mother remained behind bars for 3 years

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · May 22

True, but with everything happening in the world it doesn’t hurt if your team is playing properly to help you cope with everything else

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Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

Fared Al Mahlool | فريد المحلول @faredalmahlool.bsky.social · May 20

BREAKING NEWS: EU agrees to lift sanctions it had imposed on Syria.

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Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

QalaatAlMudiq @qalaatalmudiq.bsky.social · May 20

One week after the US, EU has agreed to lift *all* sanctions on #Syria - AFP.

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · Dec 18

The first flight since the fall of the regime has just taken off from Damascus Airport, heading to Aleppo. It’s currently the most tracked flight worldwide, a testament to the significance of this historic moment.

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Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

Mai El-Sadany @maitelsadany.bsky.social · Dec 15

🧵The story was already distasteful and orientalist (Western woman swooping in to save a brown man, days after the Syrian people had already saved themselves) and more about breaking a crazy headline than providing an alleged victim with urgent medical and psychosocial care. (5)

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Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

Mai El-Sadany @maitelsadany.bsky.social · Dec 15

🧵Rushing to produce a story like this has obfuscated the truth, created a false equivalency between detainees and regime officers & is deeply disrespectful to the thousands of legitimate stories of prisoners who suffered at the hands of men like the one @cnnipr.bsky.social featured. (4)

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Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

Rami Jarrah @ramijarrah.bsky.social · Dec 14

A gravedigger testifies about mass graves on the outskirts of Damascus, containing the remains of 6,000 people.

"they told us they want to build a military barracks, and made us dig, now we find out it was for mass graves, this whole area is full of them"

Source: @zamanalwsl.bsky.social

(Part 1)

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Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

RafifJ @rafifj.bsky.social · Dec 11

1/ So many want to give HTS more time…they say “don’t judge just yet.” But if you say you want freedom for ALL Syrians (& you mean it), you must call out new leaders on every violation.

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · Dec 10

If Hitler was alive he would def be wearing an Assad 👕

Nedal Al-Amari @nedalalamari.bsky.social · Dec 9

Image found in the Syrian Presidential Palace of Bashar al-Assad with his cousin, Ihab Makhlouf, wearing a Hitler t-shirt.

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Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

Maher Akraa @maherakraa.bsky.social · Dec 9

The revelation of brutal detention camps under Assad’s regime,like the"human slaughterhouse"of Sednaya, raises haunting questions: How could Arab states and some European countries justify normalizing ties with a dictator responsible for such atrocities? History won’t forget this betrayal of justice

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Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب @bdeeb.bsky.social · Dec 9

Whoever supported the regime even with one tweet is partially responsible for these atrocities, RIP Mazen.

Nedal Al-Amari @nedalalamari.bsky.social · Dec 9

With great sadness, Mazen Hamada was found dead inside Sednaya Prison.
Mazen Hamada had previously been detained for four years, during which he endured severe torture and rape.
He was later released and migrated to the Netherlands.

Reposted by Bashar Deeb / بشار ديب

Amer matar عامر مطر @amermatar.bsky.social · Dec 9

This is a photo of a child who was freed from Sednaya Prison in the Damascus countryside. Reports say he was born and spent his entire life in a cell with his mother, who was a political prisoner under the dictatorship that fled a few days ago.

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