Archive for December 2025
Discussing the Missing in Damascus
It was a great honour to speak in the presence of the mothers and fathers of some of the hundreds of thousands of forcibly disappeared people in Syria. We were at the National Museum in Damascus, and I was presenting the Syria Prisons Museum’s research into Branch 215 of Assad’s Military Intelligence. Agnes Callamard, the head of Amnesty International, was speaking too, as was Zeina Shahla of the National Commission for the Missing; Wassil Hamada, who has worked on Sednaya and other prisons; and Reham Hassan, who lost two brothers to ISIS.
Al-Jumhuriya did this report on the event:
I urge everyone to visit the Branch 215 investigation on the website, where there is a virtual 3D tour of the two buildings in Kafr Souseh where the branch was located. Thousands of people were murdered at these locations. The Caesar photographs were taken here. The website also has riveting witness testimony. And everyone should read the investigation by Amer Matar called Branch 215: the Bureaucracy of Murder. It provides a detailed illustration of what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil.
The Power Shifts Changing the Middle East
I was pleased to be invited again to speak with Faisal al-Yafai on The Lede podcast, connected to the excellent New Lines Magazine. We spoke about Ahmad al-Sharaa’s visits to both Moscow and Washington DC, the role of ideology in today’s Middle East, and even Scottish independence! Raya Jalabi of the Financial Times tals first about the Iraqi militias and the regional changes since & October 2023.
Qunfuz 