How Assad's Intelligence Brutally Monitored Syrians

As more and more evidence emerges, it becomes increasingly clear that Syria was drowning in a sea of security files gathered by the Assad regime's intelligence services over decades to monitor its citizens.

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on December 8, 2024, civilians have stormed security branches, uncovering vast storage facilities filled with files that expose the regime’s meticulous surveillance of the Syrian population.

An Organized Operation

The surveillance operation conducted by the Assad regime's security services was systematic, involving detailed classifications and updates on individuals, groups, and institutions both within Syria and abroad.

Notably, the regime's security apparatus had informants in every city, town, and even within government agencies and service institutions. There were dedicated informants tasked with monitoring student activities at universities.

Intelligence records from the ousted Assad regime show that any political activity or any spoken or written expression critical of the ruling authority was under constant surveillance.

The intelligence services didn’t stop at domestic surveillance; they also worked with a network of informants to monitor opposition activities abroad, tracking groups, their members, and gathering vital information.

Documents released by Syrian journalists from within security branches in Damascus revealed how the regime’s intelligence tracked and documented reports, articles, research, and investigations by opposition journalists critical of the regime.

The security services meticulously archived journalists' names, along with their article titles, research, and publication dates, which were then submitted to security branch heads, often accompanied by recommendations regarding the potential impact of this journalistic work on the Assad government.

Since Hafez al-Assad took power through a military coup in 1971 and later handed over control to his son Bashar in 2000, Syria transformed into a police state, widely recognized as one of the most repressive in the Middle East.

Under the Assad regime, Syria had 48 security branches, which implemented some of the most brutal forms of systematic torture of detainees every day.

Among the four main security branches were: Air Force Intelligence, Military Intelligence, General Intelligence, and Political Security.

According to Fadel Abdulghany, founder and head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the number of forcibly disappeared detainees in Syria due to the revolution has exceeded 112,000 since the prisons were cleared.

Abdulghany revealed in late December 2024 that roughly 24,200 people were freed after Assad's fall and the opening of prisons by local communities, an estimated figure from the original 136,000 detainees and missing persons, many of whom are presumed dead.

Following Assad’s fall, dozens of mass graves were discovered, which human rights organizations believe contain the bodies of Syrians executed by the security services and Assad's forces since 2011.

Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners were arrested during the reign of Hafez al-Assad, before the outbreak of the 2011 revolution against Bashar, which was violently crushed, transforming the country into a network of prisons and human slaughterhouses.

Writing a security report against anyone in Syria during the era of Hafez or Bashar al-Assad was a matter of life or death.

A massive storage facility was found at the Mezzeh Military Airport in Damascus, belonging to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate. Hundreds of thousands of archived files were discovered, documenting reports from all security branches across Syria.

Images from the site show that the facility was carefully organized, with sections dedicated to each province and categorized by the incoming reports from the various security agencies monitoring Syrians.

Sources confirmed to Al-Estiklal that the new Syrian administration has initiated a process of digitally preserving the documents and files found at Mezzeh Airport, using electronic scans and videos. These records are intended to be used as evidence in trials for those involved in the killing of Syrians.

‘Files on Demand’

Syrian investigative journalist Ali al-Ibrahim, who returned to Damascus after Assad's fall, revealed that within the General Intelligence Directorate in Kafar Sousah, Damascus, everything was meticulously organized—from file numbers to their contents, including death sentences proposed by military field courts.

In an interview with Al-Estiklal, al-Ibrahim said, “I was able to examine piles of documents within several security branches in Damascus, and upon thorough review, it became clear that the names listed in those files were swiftly marked for death with a mere stroke of a pen.”

He pointed out a series of names of officers from the ousted Assad regime who issued orders for the killing and torture of many Syrians.

“The documents inside the security branches were filled with orders, along with the names of those involved in executing them. Each file opened a window into a new series of violations,” al-Ibrahim added.

The investigative journalist emphasized that what initially seemed like ordinary papers in the security branches quickly revealed a systematic approach for issuing orders to take lives and hold victims accountable for vague, baseless charges, some of which only stemmed from participating in protests during the revolution.

The General Intelligence documents also revealed how the regime’s agencies tracked individuals and pursued refugees in various countries, including Turkiye, Jordan, and Qatar.

It is notable that many documents in Assad's intelligence branches bore the stamp “Highly Confidential,” indicating the regime's meticulous tracking of individuals whose movements and activities they sought to monitor.

Some of the documents also revealed intelligence details, such as personal relationships within communities, hostile actions, business agreements, conflicts, and research on foreign companies.

The documents showcased how intelligence officers would monitor social media posts made by individuals opposing the ousted Assad regime.

The officers assigned to surveil Syrians even documented comments, the names of commentators, and the context of each post. In one document, an intelligence report stated, “The individual, named so-and-so, liked a laughing emoji after insulting President Bashar al-Assad.”

In another report, an informant tracked a Syrian citizen in his city, managed to photograph him inside a restaurant with several friends, and filed a security report which was submitted to one of the intelligence branches.

In some instances, families found documents bearing their relatives' names after they were detained under mysterious circumstances in 2012. These individuals were later executed at Saydnaya Prison near Damascus in July 2021.

Preserving Evidence

Both regional and international media have gained insight into the operations of Syria's intelligence branches, which housed detention centers and specialized document sections.

Secret intelligence documents uncovered by The Sunday Times in Syria “have revealed the terrifying extent of Bashar al-Assad’s Stasi-like surveillance state, where family members spied on each other and the slightest suspicion could result in ordinary people — including children — being swept into a network of prisons notorious for torture and executions, with victims buried in mass graves.”

“Analysis of intelligence documents reveals that family members spied on each other, teachers betrayed pupils — and ‘traitors’ were tortured and killed,” the newspaper has learned.

“By tapping phones, hacking computers and sending agents to surveil suspects in person, the security services gathered an incredibly comprehensive, and often deeply boring, level of detail about the lives of the people they were watching.”

Informants' surveillance reports provided detailed accounts, including the location of the garage where a suspect's mother had her car repaired, the frequency with which another suspect visited his in-laws, and the number of apartment buildings owned by a third.

The Sunday Times report concluded that thousands of pages of documents demonstrated how Syrians were coerced—sometimes by force, sometimes by persuasion—into reporting their friends, neighbors, and family members to the security services. Intelligence branches even infiltrated suspects’ phones, tracked them, and documented their personal relationships.

Currently, the new Syrian administration has implemented strict security measures around the intelligence branches, allowing only journalists and human rights organization members, with prior authorization, to access the evidence revealing the security state built by the Assad regime.

Syrian engineer Osama Othman, previously known as Sami, who managed to preserve digital records documenting torture in Assad's detention facilities, has called for the protection of these documents to ensure they can be presented in courts to prosecute the perpetrators.

Sami managed to leave Syria at the end of 2013 and revealed after Assad's fall that the photographer known as Caesar had been sending him the images.

Caesar is the alias of a former photographer for the Syrian military police who defected from Assad's regime in 2013 and leaked images of detainees murdered by the regime in its prisons.

This defector successfully smuggled out 55,000 photographs that expose the brutality suffered by prisoners in Assad's jails.

This revelation led to the U.S. passing the Caesar Act on June 17, 2020, which aims to penalize individuals and entities supporting or dealing with the ousted Syrian regime.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Military Operations Command, announced that the transitional government would soon publish “the first list of those heavily involved in torturing the Syrian people” to pursue and hold them accountable.

“We have reaffirmed our commitment to mercy for those whose hands are not stained with the blood of the Syrian people, granting amnesty to those who were part of mandatory military service,” al-Sharaa said, stressing that the “blood and rights” of innocent victims and detainees “will not be wasted or forgotten.”

He vowed to bring perpetrators of such violations to justice, adding, “We will pursue them in our country.” Al-Sharaa also indicated that other countries would be urged to hand over any suspects.