Hundreds of people have died in detention in Syria, the government recognizes

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Seven years ago, Islam Dabbas, an engineering student, was jailed for protesting against the Syrian government. His mother visited him twice, paying bribes to do it, but then the permissions stopped. She did not know anything about her son's fate since then

until last week, when a parent filed a government registration document and was shocked to see that this gave the date of Mr. Dabbas's death: January 15, 2013.

"The news of his death devastated us, and we wish we knew it then," said his sister, Heba, who lives in exile in Egypt. "Since his arrest, we have lived days of hope and days of despair while uncertainty occupied us."

In recent weeks, hundreds of Syrian families have suddenly learned that their missing relatives have been registered by the government. Government officials did not publicly comment on the new information, said how many people asked or explained how they died.

But the documents seem to be the first public recognition by the government that hundreds or even thousands of prisoners have died in the custody of the state. Analysts believe that the changes in status show that President Bashar al-Assad is confident enough to win the war and stay in power that he can do this admission without fear of repercussion, prompting the families of the missing to confirm their worst fears and start

"The regime closes a chapter and starts a new one," said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. "It is telling rebels and activists that this chapter is gone, that all hope in a surviving revolutionary spirit has been crushed."

In some cities, the government posted the names of the deceased so that their parents could obtain death certificates. In other cases, the families obtained documents attesting to the death of their relatives. In some cases, security officers have personally informed families.

Many documents show that the deaths occurred years ago, at the beginning of the uprising against Mr. Assad, which degenerated into a brutal civil war

. The conflict began seven years ago, with tens of thousands of people missing in government jails where torture and ill-treatment, sometimes fatal, are commonplace, according to human rights groups. The prisoners included rebels and political demonstrators, and their families often found themselves fighting for information.

Rights groups view the new death notices as a tacit admission that many inmates died or were killed in government jails

. Assad largely routed the rebels who sought to oust him and restore control over much of the country. His government and his supporters in Russia and Iran have tried to show that the war was coming to an end, and letting families know that their missing relatives were dead could also be a way of trying to move the country forward.

leaves a Syrian family in bureaucratic limbo. Without his death certificate, for example, his widow can not remarry and his offspring can not sell property or handle inheritance problems.

But while deaths may facilitate such transactions, many doubt that families accept the news of the deaths of their loved ones.

"It's hard to move on when the people responsible for these mass disappearances are still there," said Sara Kayyali, a Syrian researcher at Human Rights Watch. "You look at the attacker in the face, and it's not something you can ignore for a very long time."

The documents do not provide any details on deaths, except a date. Many families still want to know how their loved ones died and where their bodies are.

Two brothers, Yahya and Muhammad Shurbaji, were arrested one day apart in September 2011, according to Muhammad's son, Obaida. But as the uprisings turned into war and their families fled elsewhere in Syria or abroad, they lost track of where the brothers were being held

. for the missing, asked the documents for the brothers. They found that Yahya died in January 2013 and Muhammad in December of the same year. No cause of death has been given, and the family has no idea of ​​where their bodies are.

"The shock is indescribable," said Bayan, the men's sister, who lives in Leeds, England. "How cruel is it to kill people and deprive their families of seeing them one last time, to prevent victims from saying goodbye to their families?"

We still do not know how many detainees were recently registered as dead. Many Syrian families are reluctant to discuss their cases for fear of reprisals from the government

. The Syrian human rights network, an exile surveillance group opposed to the government, confirmed 312 recent cases, said its director Fadel Abdul Ghany.

This is a fraction of the more than 80,000 government inmates his group said to have confirmed, so he expects more names to come out with time.

He assumed that information is coming out now because the government feels safe "The scheme means that you have to accept me as I am," said Abdul Ghany. "I won, and you can not do anything about it."

Lack of information left many families confused and wondering if the documents are accurate.

Niraz Saied, a photographer who lived in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus and won a United Nations award in 2014 for his work documenting life, has been missing since 2015.

"There is nothing more difficult than writing these words, but Niraz will not die not in silence ", she wrote on Facebook. "They killed my love, my husband."