{"id":144043,"date":"2026-06-03T17:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/144043\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:55:10","slug":"the-deaths-13-years-ago-of-syrian-chess-champion-rania-al-abbasi-and-her-family-are-confirmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/144043\/","title":{"rendered":"The deaths 13 years ago of Syrian chess champion Rania al-Abbasi and her family are confirmed"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) \u2014 Hundreds of people have flocked to a tent in Damascus to mourn a former national chess champion who went missing 13 years ago along with her husband and six children, now that their deaths in Syria\u2019s civil wa<\/a> r have finally been confirmed. <\/p>\n

Surviving relatives of Rania al-Abbasi announced Sunday that they had seen evidence that she and her family had been killed by pro-government gunmen shortly after they were detained in 2013, and that they would set up a giant tent in the city on Tuesday and Wednesday to receive condolences. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had hope. We\u2019ve been looking for them for 13 years in every way possible,\u201d Rana\u2019s brother Wael al-Abbasi said in an interview with The Associated Press. \u201cThen we got the horrible news that they were killed the same day they were arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case of Rana al-Abbasi, who also was a dentist and who had been accused of funding the opposition, was well-known in Syria, and this week\u2019s revelations have received wide coverage in the country\u2019s news media. Photos of the family have been all over social media. Many people have said the killers should be sentenced to death. <\/p>\n

Mohammad Shukri, Syrian minister of religious affairs, visited the tent in the Rukneddine neighborhood on Tuesday and said the country\u2019s new government is making sure that the culprits are held accountable. \u201cThey must get their punishment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

More than 100,000 people went missing in areas once controlled by forces loyal to now-ousted President Bashar Assad<\/a> and many are believed to have died under torture<\/a> run by the country\u2019s powerful security agencies. The number could be higher, because many Syrians were too scared to complain under Assad, now in self-exile in Russia. Some people are now coming forward requesting information about missing loved ones.<\/p>\n

During the early years of Syria\u2019s conflict, which started with pro-democracy protests and later became a civil war, many people were killed, and the fate of many remains unknown. The conflict left nearly half a million people dead.<\/p>\n

The fate of the al-Abassi family was revealed following the arrest<\/a> of an ex-intelligence officer, who allegedly was involved in the killings, surviving family members said. Amjad Yousef had appeared in a video leaked<\/a> four years ago that purportedly showed him and his comrades fatally shooting dozens of people during the country\u2019s civil war.<\/p>\n

Al-Abbasi\u2019s family was shown another video that was not made public showing the children dead after apparently being strangled or beaten to death.<\/p>\n

Wael al-Abbasi said that his brother-in-law, Abdul-Rahman al-Yassin, was detained on March 9, 2013 while his wife and children were detained four days later. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were holding on to hope to find one or two of the kids (alive),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Yousef, the ex-intelligence officer, was arrested by Syria\u2019s new authorities in April in the central province in Hama where he had been hiding. He has been undergoing questioning since then.<\/p>\n

Wael al-Abbasi said he and other relatives saw a video in which Yousef was talking and pointing the camera at the children in a dark room that may have been part of a detention center.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was filming the kids and naming each one of them. Those were our kids, there was no room for doubt that it\u2019s them, they were even wearing the same clothes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The children\u2019s ages were from 1 1\/2 to 14. They were identified as Ahmad, Dema, Najah, Intisar, Alaa and Layan. He said a couple of them had their faces bloodied. <\/p>\n

The brother said he hoped that Yousef and others involved in the killings would go on trial and be hanged. \u201cThey\u2019re criminals and we have proof of that through videos. We want the whole chain, all the way up to Bashar Assad. We want them all to hanged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the fall of Assad, several top officials in his government and security agencies have been detained and some have been put on trial<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Al-Abbasi\u2019s cousin, Doa\u2019a al-Abbasi, said that the family had been worried that the children might have been trafficked, but now they know the truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is this brutality? What is this hatred? They waited for them to come home from school so he can kill them,\u201d she said, referring to the children. \u201cThere are many people like Amjad Yousef and we hope they will all be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) \u2014 Hundreds of people have flocked to a tent in Damascus to mourn a former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[47022,29343,887,197,47023,81,47021,45673,21929,95,82],"class_list":["post-144043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-abdul-rahman-al-yassin","tag-amjad-yousef","tag-bashar-assad","tag-general-news","tag-mohammad-shukri","tag-politics","tag-rana-al-abbasi","tag-rania-al-abbasi","tag-shootings","tag-syria","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116687465925678988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}