About the SMFT

The Syrian Missing Persons and Forensic Team (SMFT) is an independent, nonprofit, humanitarian organization focused on discovering the fates of missing persons who were disappeared in Northeast Syria during the period of ISIS control. The team collaborates with families, collects information on missing persons, conducts contextual investigations of detention centers and grave sites, and preserves mass graves. In the future, the team plans to utilize information collected in investigations, and its growing forensic skills, to exhume mass graves in Northeast Syria, identify victims, and, when possible, return them to their loved ones.

The SMFT grew out of the forensic branch of the Raqqa First Response Team, which started as an initiative at the beginning of 2018. In the aftermath of the Coalition bombings of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, the team removed rubble and cement from buildings in danger of collapse, extinguished fires, provided first aid, and conducting forensic services such as recovering bodies from the streets and under rubble, and exhuming mass graves. This work focused on addressing the immediate needs of the residents in the aftermath of airstrikes. Unfortunately, early exhumation efforts did not have the resources to properly identify victims; the SMFT was created in 2021 to address this gap.