Inside Assad’s prisons an officer stole a detainee’s liver

Under Assad’s rule, criminality did not stop at torture, arbitrary detention, and the horrors we have come to know. Yesterday, Syria’s Ministry of Justice revealed a crime committed by military doctors during the Assad era inside Tishreen Military Hospital, one that defies imagination.

According to the ministry, the doctors removed the liver of a former detainee held by Branch 215 of Military Intelligence and transplanted it into the body of a patient linked to the Director of Medical Services, Major General Ammar Suleiman.

In a filmed interrogation published by the Syrian Ministry of Justice, Brigadier General Dr. Al-Yaqzan Ahmad Hassan, the doctor directly responsible for the operation, said he and his assistants were assigned by Major General Ammar Suleiman to carry out a liver transplant for a patient connected to him.

According to the confessions, the detainee died immediately after his liver was removed. The operation lasted six hours, and the transplant recipient died about a week later.

Tishreen Military Hospital was never just a hospital. It was part of a wider security apparatus where extensive crimes took place. The case also reportedly involved interference by former president Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher, while the identity of the detainee whose liver was taken remains unknown.