There are many men who carry out the Assad regime’s bidding - from soldiers in the army to the intelligence officers of the mukhabarat. But there's also another group, who do much of the regime’s dirty work, but who are only unofficially tied to the Assads. These men are known as the shabiha - which translates roughly from the Arabic to mean “ghosts”. But who exactly are these ghosts? Where did they come from and what crimes are they responsible for?

The Syria Trials is a 75 Podcast production. This episode is hosted by Fritz Streiff. It was produced by Sasha Edye-Lindner, with editorial support from Mais Katt. The voice over was provided by Ahmad Al Muhammad. Translation was by Alaa Hassan. This episode was mixed by Tobias Withers.

Support for our podcast comes from German Federal Foreign Office funds that are provided by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen IFA’s Zivik Funding Programme.

To find out more about our podcast, visit our website https://75podcasts.org/. Here you'll find an archive of all our episodes with their transcripts, as well as our other productions.

Useful links:

https://www.instagram.com/ammarodaba/?hl=en

https://www.ungor.nl/

https://en.qantara.de/authors/tarek-azizeh

https://mobile.twitter.com/tarekazizeh 

https://trialinternational.org/latest-post/mouafak-al-d/

https://www.prosecutionservice.nl/latest/news/2022/08/12/alleged-militia-member-linked-to-syrian-regime-to-remain-in-custody-on-suspicion-of-war-crimes