Assad Regime Files Expose Syria’s Surveillance State and Deadly Informant Network

Intelligence files recovered in Damascus after Bashar al-Assad’s fall show how Syria’s mukhabarat turned relatives, spouses, and neighbors into informants, feeding Branch 215 detentions that often ended in torture, disappearance, or death.

The Wall Street Journal reported on December 28, 2025 that its reporters photographed and digitized more than 1,000 pages of Syrian military intelligence documents inside the Kafr Sousah security complex in central Damascus near Umayyad Square. The Journal said some files were uncovered in a hidden repository revealed when opposition forces broke through a brick wall while seizing the compound on December 8, 2024. Other documents were left scattered on desks by intelligence officers who fled as the capital fell.

According to the Journal, the files expose a surveillance state run through Syria’s four main intelligence agencies. The documents include wiretap notes, internal reports, and informant tips from across Syria, the Middle East, and Europe. Former detainees told the Journal that many written confessions in the archive were extracted under torture. Intelligence officers treated routine conduct as criminal activity, including holding U.S. dollars, owning unregistered SIM cards, or criticizing the government in private conversations.

One file details the death of Abdu Kharouf, a 60-year-old imam from a poor Damascus neighborhood. The Journal reported that in July 2020 he was summoned by an intelligence officer under the pretext of mediating a local family dispute. When he arrived, agents forced him into a truck and took him to the basement prison inside the complex. His family later learned through civil registry records that he died in custody in mid-August 2020, and authorities refused to return his body. A July 2020 intelligence document said his arrest was linked to interrogation statements from a distant cousin, Mahmoud Kharouf, a former rebel fighter detained that same summer. Mahmoud Kharouf denied to the Journal that he ever named the imam, saying he was tortured and forced to sign papers he could not read. The imam’s family told the Journal the file confirmed their long-held suspicions.

Another case shows how surveillance reached inside the home. The Journal reported that television actor Firas Al-Faqir said his wife, Hala Deeb, secretly recorded his political complaints during conversations at home in early 2020. He said she threatened to send the recordings to security services unless he paid her. A July 2020 intelligence report said military intelligence received information that Al-Faqir spoke against the government in his home and that a source was instructed to persuade Deeb to postpone a divorce to gather more material, according to the Journal. Deeb, now living in Dubai, declined to comment.

A third file follows Mahmoud Hammani, detained in 2014 at age 17. Hammani told the Journal he was stripped, suspended by his wrists, and shocked with electricity until he thumbprinted a confession he said was false. The Journal reported the file said his case was dismissed for lack of evidence and that he was released. Hammani said a bribe helped secure his release and now serves in the security forces of Syria’s new government.

The Journal placed these cases within a broader record of disappearance and mass killing. It cited the Syrian Network for Human Rights estimate of more than 160,000 people forcibly disappeared since 2011, alongside United Nations documentation and war-crimes investigations. The Journal also reported testimony from a former military forensic official who said his unit cataloged three to ten bodies a day from Branch 215 between 2012 and 2015, many showing signs consistent with torture. Syria’s new government has said it plans investigations, but the Journal reported a full accounting has not yet begun.