At Central Damascus, you can forgive the doubt that the war has ever occurred.
The ancient Old Town in the Syrian capital is numbering life, and street sellers appear sweets and jewelry when crowds push each other. Narrow fragments and splendor of places such as the Umayyad mosque do not bear any destructive scars of the 14-year civil war of the country.
There is a different world just a kilometer. Damascus, PrzedmieĊcie Jobar, lying on a busy highway from the Old Town, is completely demolished. The key line of the front for years, each building has been silent in forgetting by artillery and raids.
This is the first suburbs leading to the eastern Ghout, a belt of slums and orchards, which created a key fortress for the forces of the rebels questioning the rule of President Syria Bashar Al-Assad.
Among these battered districts, one slum rises above the rest: the city of Doum. One of the informal capitals of the Syrian revolution Duma was a priority for the retaliation of the regime, leaving scars visible to every building in the city.
One of these attacks was much worse than the rest. April 7, 2018. Helicopter of the Syrian army I dropped the barrel for one of the buildings below. It did not explode after landing, but issued a much more deadly load: chlorine gas. The gas flowed from the landing site of the barrel on the third floor to the basement of the building, choking dozens of women and children who took refuge from the bombs.
“The whole stairs were filled with bodies,” said Abdurahman Hejazi, a local who witnessed the attack. “They spilled at their lips, melting in their own lungs. Most of them did not survive. “
The attack not only led to mass victims. Soon he will appear in a larger drama, in which some of his survivors were forced to give a false testimony that it never happened at all – an act that would earn some of them contempt and hatred from their neighbors, and eventually led them to the loss of almost almost all.
“How could we tell the truth?”
A gas attack in 2018, which killed at least 40 people and hurt hundreds of more, arrived at the end of the brutal seven -year siege of Douma and the rest of the eastern Ghout. The Syrian regime, next to Russian and Iranian allies, finally tried to excrete rebels from the capital around the capital and secure the victory in the battle for Damascus.
The chemical strike effectively broke the resistance of the rebels in the area, which leads to Evacuation agreement This contributed to local insurgent groups transported in the territory of rebels in northern Syria, and the regime Assad assesses control over Douma just a few days later.
The site is now completely unusual, just another indefinite avenue in the maze of abandoned streets. A single poster on the wall commemorates four who died in the attack.
For Hejasi and his friend Omar Diab, this led to a seven -year -old test.
“We both went to the underground hospital nearby here to help heal the victims of a gas attack,” said Diab, recently speaking in a barely equipped apartment directly next to the site of the strike. “I just tried to wash the children – clean the gas from their eyes and face. There was a video with us that became viral. That's how they found us. “
“They” in this case are Russia and the Assad regime. After the attack, Moscow quickly went into the injury control mode for her ally.
He rounded 17 inhabitants of Douma – among them hejasi and Diab – i He brought them to HagiNetherlands. There, they forced to testify an organization with a prohibition of chemical weapons (OPCW) that the gas attack in Douma was “issued” by rebel groups or white helmets, a civil rescue organization.
“They took us to Moscow first to make sure that we understand what we were to say (in The Hague),” said Diab, whose 11-year-old son Hassan was also brought to testimony.
Others confirmed this on the journey. Three Syrian doctors from Douma AFP said The Assad government directly threatened their families to force them to deny the gas attack. Western countries have condemned the conference with the Messenger of France to OPCW describing It is as “obscene masquerade”.
“Members of our family – those who survived – were still in Douma,” said Diab. “How could we tell the truth with them as hostages?”
Although this experience was shocking enough, it was to come worse.
Rumors and threats appear
When the Devil and Hejasi returned to Douma, they received new apartments through the Assad regime – not as a reward, but according to two men to observe and ensure their loyalty more effectively.
This was interpreted by many other residents of the city, say Devil and Hejasi, as proof that they were lying about the death of their friends and neighbors in exchange for special privileges. Rumors have also spread that men received special security permits that allowed them to bypass many military control points in the city.
“After that, we began to quickly receive threats,” said Hejazi. “At the beginning they were simply angry comments and a dirty look, but soon it became clear that something more serious could happen. I started to feel like my life was threatened. “
Idlib is the last big pocket of the Rebel forces in Syria, and Bashar Al-Assad would help her to regain its complete control over the country.
The situation became so tense that both men would try to escape from the country in 2023. Hejasi went to the border with Lebanon, near the city of Talkalakh, a well -known smuggling. When he waited to take, he was discovered by the Syrian army patrol and arrested, then he was seriously beaten for over nine hours. He was brought to Douma and ordered to leave the city again, let alone Syria.
Diab decided on a legal path with similar consequences. He went to renew his passport, then he was taken by Syrian military intelligence and imprisoned for 17 days. There would also be no escape.
Both men admit that they hoped when the Assad regime was overthrown on December 8 last year. This soon turned out to be false.
“Three days after the fall of the regime, HTS fighters (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) came to my house,” said Diab, referring to the group of rebels, which displaced Assad and runs a new government of Syria.
“They threw me into the street, saying that I would never come back here. I couldn't even take any of my things – everything I have now is literally clothes on my back. ” Now he lives with his parents, on the same street where a gas attack took place.
Accusations of downloading bribes
The same happened hejasi. His house was taken over by a local sheikh, who since then moved to Saudi Arabia and since then gathered a significant influence on the family Douma.
“I can't go to the new authorities on this topic because (Sheikh) has many residents here who love him,” said Hejasi. “If I push this problem, I can be kidnapped and even killed. They are friends with fighters from the north (Idlib, long -lasting HTS headquarters) and have all the power. “
Hejasi planned his wedding during the fall of the regime and his eviction. Now, without a home, or prosperity that has been translated into an indefinite period.
A short trip around the area confirms what two men say about universal reluctance to them.
“I know that some people who went to Hagi were threatened by the regime,” said 47-year-old mechanic Ziad al-Zaher. “But others definitely took bribes. The regime gave them privileges in exchange for a lie. “
Even some other witnesses brought by Russia to the OPCW conference feel this way. Tawfiq Ali Diab, who lost his wife and three daughters in the attack, has an intense reluctance to Heejazi and Omar Diab.
Caolan Robertson, a journalist from Kiev who met men in December His own storyHe said: “When we met (Tawfiq), he shouted on the street, saying that he did not want to talk to us because we came from a conversation with Abdurahman (Hejasi).”
“He said that (Hejasi and Omar Diab) took regime bribes that they were lying for their own profit,” said Robertson.
“Why does nobody help us?”
Hejasi and Omar Diab categorically deny the reception of any bribes.
“We didn't have any choice,” said the Diab. “The regime placed us in these apartments and we could not do anything about it.”
Used by the Assad regime and despised by their neighbors, hejasi and devil are in the face of an impossible situation. None of them feel safe to live in Doum, but none of the hope of escaping or compensation from the new authorities.
“Our only hope is the international community, talking to the media,” said Hejasi, long and nervous pulling of a cigarette.
“These countries, such as France and Switzerland, which send delegations here, say that human rights are important to them. Why does nobody help us? Are they waiting for one of us to kill? “