A demonstrators holds a placards with a picture depicting Syrian President Bashar Assad, during a protest against Russian military operations in Syria, in Istanbul.

Syria’s government is profiting from money charged to families of people trying to find loved ones forcibly disappeared in what are crimes against humanity, rights group Amnesty International charged on Thursday.

The group said the Syrian state was benefiting from an “insidious black market in which family members desperate to find out the fates of their disappeared relatives are ruthlessly exploited for cash.”

Amnesty said nearly 60,000 civilians are believed to have been “disappeared” since Syria’s conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

Families are left with no trace of their relatives and often face detention themselves if they contact security services seeking information.

Rise of middlemen

That has given rise to a black market in which middlemen are paid sums up to tens of thousands of dollars to collect information about missing loved ones.

“As well as shattering lives, disappearances are driving a black market economy of bribery which trades in the suffering of families who have lost a loved one,” said Philip Luther, director Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program.

“They are left with mounting debts and a gaping hole where a loved one used to be.” Nicolette Boehland, the report’s author, said there was ample evidence that the state was benefitting from the money being paid to brokers.

“We are certain that government and prison officials are profiting from the payments they receive in relation to disappearances, as this has been corroborated by hundreds of witnesses,” she told AFP.

“The practice is so widespread that it is difficult to believe the government is not aware of it and effectively condoning it by failing to take action to stop it.”

False hopes

Amnesty said some families had sold property or spent their life savings trying to find missing relatives, sometimes receiving false information in exchange.

It cited the case of one man whose three bothers disappeared in 2012 and who spent $150,000 (138,000 euros) trying to find them.

He was unsuccessful and ended up in Turkey, working to pay back his debts, the group said.

Luther said the government’s campaign of enforced disappearances amounted to crimes against humanity and urged the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.

More than 250,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

All parties to the increasingly complex war have been accused of rights violations of varying degrees of severity, ranging from arbitrary detention to the use of chemical weapons.

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