Washington D.C. – Al Monitor, February 11, 2025
In a centuries-old monastery on a rocky hill north of Damascus, friends of missing Italian priest Paolo Dall’Oglio carry on his legacy, hopeful Bashar al-Assad’s ouster might help reveal the Jesuit’s fate.
“We want to know if Father Paolo is alive or dead, who imprisoned him, and what was his fate,” said Father Jihad Youssef who heads Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, about 100 kilometres (62 miles) north of Damascus.
For years, Dall’Oglio lived in Deir Mar Musa — the monastery of St Moses the Ethiopian — which dates to around the 6th century. He is credited with helping restore the place of worship.
A fierce critic of Assad, whose 2011 repression of anti-government protests sparked war, he was exiled the following year for meeting with opposition members, returning secretly to opposition-controlled areas in 2013.
He disappeared that summer while heading to the Raqa headquarters of a group that would later become known as the Islamic State, to plead for the release of kidnapped activists.
Conflicting reports emerged on Dall’Oglio’s whereabouts, including that he was kidnapped by the extremists, killed or handed to the Syrian government.
IS’s territorial defeat in Syria in 2019 brought no new information.
Tens of thousands of people have been detained or gone missing in Syria during more than a decade of conflict, many disappearing into Assad’s jails.
His December overthrow has enabled his friends at the monastery to openly discuss suspicions Dall’Oglio might have been “imprisoned by the regime”, Youssef said.
“We waited to see a sign of him… in Saydnaya prison or Palestine Branch,” Youssef said, referring to notorious detention facilities from which detainees were released after Assad’s toppling.
“We were told a lot of things, including that he was seen in the Adra prison in 2019,” Youssef said, referring to another facility outside Damascus, “but nothing reliable”.
