A BBC News investigation has uncovered startling details from an abandoned luxury apartment in Damascus belonging to Syria’s feared intelligence chief Hisham Louka — known as “The Spider” — the head of the General Security Directorate, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
In the apartment, journalists found expensive clothing, gold medals, and various photographs of Louka with Assad, including scenes of them shaking hands. Among these, in a plain notebook, they found 155 handwritten names and phone numbers.
Sanctioned by the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, the intelligence chief was linked to the torture of dissidents in Syria and to atrocities such as the so-called Eid massacre of 2015, which killed children in Homs.
After Assad’s fall he vanished overnight, prompting ordinary Syrians and the families of the missing to demand justice, and Syria’s attorney general issued an arrest warrant against him.
To track Louka down, journalists returned to London and began verifying the numbers in the notebook. Getting no response from calls to military commanders and relatives, one reporter travelled to Syria and began making inquiries through the doctors’ appointments listed in the notebook. Then, based on information from an apartment guard, they located Louka’s personal bodyguard, Mahmoud.
Mahmoud said Louka had fled with a large sum of money from the capital the night before the government fell. Later, following leads from Lebanese sources and, in the apartment, Russian intelligence awards and a New Year card, it was confirmed that Louka had fled under a different name on a Russian passport, via Lebanon, to Moscow.
Investigators eventually obtained a Russian phone number for Louka and, by having an acquaintance call it, confirmed it was Louka speaking on the line. When the BBC then called the number directly, Louka answered and said, in a fearful tone, that he was in no position to speak under the current circumstances and could give no explanation. Later, following a second Syrian number and leads from a messaging app, the BBC confirmed that Hisham Louka is now hiding across two different suburbs on the outskirts of Moscow.
With Russia offering neither extradition nor any comment, the discovery has brought fresh anguish to those still hoping for justice — among them Mohammed, the father of a child killed in the 2015 Homs attack.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report