In Syria the Assad Regime would cause many people to seemingly vanish in thin air now loved ones search for them. ‘New York Times’

For over a decade, tens of thousands of people living in Syria would disappear without explanation. They were picked up off the street. Plucked from university classes. Yanked out of stores as they bought groceries, and from taxis on their way home from work.

Relatives were never told what had happened — but they knew. Many of the disappeared had been thrown into President Bashar al-Assad’s vast network of prisons, where they were tortured and killed on an industrial scale.

Now, with the overthrow of the Assad regime, families of missing Syrians are hoping that they may be reunited with loved ones, or at least learn what happened to them.

On Sunday, they rushed to one of the most notorious prisons in Syria, Sednaya, in search of news. Then on Tuesday, hundreds descended onto the morgue at a hospital in Damascus, where 38 bodies discovered at the prison had been taken.

Some displayed photos of missing relatives, asking if anyone recognized them.

Text by Christina Goldbaum, ‘The New York Times’

Populist fervor swept through the Middle East about 15 years ago with regimes falling one by one in a hope that a brighter future would prevail. The brighter future never materialized but a new wave of exasperated citizens are trying to make their voices heard with the overthrow of the Syrian Regime. The Middle East is now basically up for grabs and the region’s future is very uncertain with everyone wondering what country will be the next with a government that falls in a 24 hour period.