STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Our colleague, Leila Fadel, is in Syria learning some of the secrets of a government that has now fallen. Her latest revelation is painful enough that some people may find it hard to listen to, especially if you've got kids with you. But we also think it is important to document this. The story lasts about seven minutes.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: This is the story of a Syrian man who for six years had to deny the way he watched his wife and every one of his four children die. Toufic Diab (ph) buried that dangerous memory. But as soon as Bashar al-Assad's regime crumbled, so did his government's lies. One of the most brazen - that he never used chemical weapons. But it just takes a short drive out of Damascus to find that's not true, past a landscape of flattened civilian buildings from battles, regime airstrikes and barrel bombs...
Even the central monument that is in the middle of the squares have gone.
...And into the district of Ghouta on the outskirts of the capital.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: See how everybody knows. You just have to ask, where was the chemical attack? And they tell you, it was in this neighborhood next to this bakery.
Ask anyone here and they know where to find the few survivors of a chlorine gas attack on April 7, 2018, when regime forces retook this area from rebels. But when we find Toufic, he tells us he had to pretend the poison that stole his family was not real, that the attack never happened.
TOUFIC DIAB: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: Syrian intelligence forced him to say that it was terrorists and gunmen who killed his family. I don't know where people got the story of a chemical attack, he would say. It's made up.
They would tell you to say that, or you knew that you had to say that?
DIAB: (Through interpreter) They would tell me, and I also knew that I had to do that.
FADEL: If he didn't confirm the state's lies, he would be taken, maybe worse, he says. Syrian state TV and Russian state TV came to interview him, and he'd repeat his rehearsed story.
DIAB: (Through interpreter) And there were officers behind them telling us that you can't say anything.
FADEL: It must have been hard to not be able to say - to have to lie for all that time.
DIAB: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: "Yes," he says. "They even showed me pictures of my children in the attack and asked if they were mine. And I would say, no, it's fake." Once he was sure Assad was gone, Diab went on Facebook and did what had always been forbidden.
DIAB: On Facebook (non-English language spoken).
(Through interpreter) I put their pictures up, and I wrote the martyrs of the chemical attack.
FADEL: The truth now unburied.
DIAB: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: It's a beautiful family.
DIAB: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: Toufic is in his brother Mej's (ph) home just above the family tire shop. Mej was the one who got the first call when the building, where his two brothers lived with their families, was struck. He rushed over and found babies, mothers, fathers, children, including his nine nephews and nieces, their mothers and his two brothers suffocating. The youngest, Zuri (ph), was just 40 days old.
DIAB: Hey.
FADEL: Oh, my Gosh.
He's showing us videos - children foaming at the mouth.
A girl in a pink and white striped shirt. It's hard to look at. Babies on top of each other.
DIAB: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: Look at that child - her face white, her mouth open.
DIAB: (Through interpreter) The Civil Defence filmed this.
FADEL: Toufic and his brother take us to the apartment building where it happened.
DIAB: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: So he just pointed to the road right in front of the building, and he said, all - I laid here. All of the bodies were right here and in the entryway of this building.
That night, Toufic says, he heard booms. He and his family rushed to the basement for shelter, like they always did when strikes and fighting between the regime and rebels intensified, thinking it would be safer. But once they noticed the strong smell of chlorine and disinfectant, they tried to get outside.
DIAB: (Through interpreter) The chemical barrel came from up there, and it left a hole. The chemicals leaked into the building.
(Non-English language spoken, imitating retching).
FADEL: He mimics the retching, their throats tightening.
DIAB: (Through interpreter) Everybody was vomiting. Right before that, an explosive barrel was dropped in this neighborhood, so the - all the water tanks were broken, so we couldn't even wash with water.
FADEL: Toufic's brother, Mej, tried to shake their other brother awake. Rifat's (ph) bare skin would peel away at his touch. By day's end, Rifat and his whole family were dead, along with almost every resident of this building - 42 people. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigated the attack that stole Toufic's family. It found reasonable grounds that it was Assad's air force that dropped two yellow cylinders of toxic chlorine gas that landed on these homes in this building and one other. Today, there are no signs of the horrors that happened here - no plaque, no place to lay flowers, no pictures - like it never happened, just as Assad's regime tried to claim. New residents have even moved in. And it's still too hard for Toufic to go inside.
What are your favorite memories of your kids? He got really quiet. No, I think it's too hard.
He gets quiet and turns away. But he comes back with his phone to show me videos that commemorate his children's lives...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: And it's all of them when they were smiling and beautiful and alive.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: And the song is saying, oh, martyr, the beloved of God.
...Pictures of his Hali (ph), Hamar (ph), Muhammed (ph) and Judy (ph) as babies, as toddlers, as little kids. In one, Muhammed is smiling with a fake mustache on just like his dad's. In another, his kids pose just outside the building where they were eventually killed. Judy, his youngest, was only in first grade. Now that Assad is gone...
DIAB: (Through interpreter) We want an investigation. We want them to come and investigate. We want the rights of our children, our rights as well.
FADEL: What would that look like - getting the rights of your children and your rights?
DIAB: (Through interpreter) Everybody who was involved get prosecuted. I lost 42 people.
FADEL: He doesn't even know where his family's buried. He says the bodies were taken by the regime. During Syria's civil war, chemical attacks were supposed to be a redline for global leaders. Former President Obama drew that line in 2012 and warned of enormous consequences. Only a few months later, Assad crossed that line. And as it's now open for everyone to see, Assad's forces then used chemical weapons on the Syrian people again and again and again.
(SOUNDBITE OF LEANDRA COSTA'S "NORTHBOUND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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