After Assad downfall, US family clings to hope as Syria prison search unfolds
The daughter of Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen presumed dead in Syria, describes her anguish as she awaits answers on what happened to her father.
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WASHINGTON — The emptying of Syria’s notorious system of prisons has been an agonizing experience for Maryam Kamalmaz.
“I've been going through all of these pictures, and I've been going through all of these videos, frantically looking for any signs of my father,” Kamalmaz said in a phone interview from her home in Grand Prairie, Texas.
Her father, Majd Kamalmaz, a clinical psychologist from Virginia, is among the handful of Americans known to have been detained by the Syrian regime during the civil war. In May 2024, US officials told his family they had intelligence indicating he was dead, more than seven years after Kamalmaz, then 59, was last seen at a government-run checkpoint in Damascus.
