• Hundreds of Syrian families have suddenly learned that their missing relatives, many of them arrested years ago, were registered as dead by the government. Officials have not said how many detainees died or what happened to them. It appears to be the first public acknowledgment by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, depicted in the poster above, that hundreds if not thousands of prisoners had died in custody. “The regime is closing one chapter and starting a new one,” one analyst said. “It is telling the rebels and the activists that this chapter is gone, that whatever hope in some surviving revolutionary spirit has been crushed.”

Source: New York Times July 27, 2018 04:07 UTC