The families of Syria’s disappeared are asking for the truth. Our country cannot rebuild until we have it

Wafa Mustafa, centre, with her father’s photo at a protest in Damascus in December, calling for accountability for the Assad regime’s detention and torture of relatives. Photograph: G Alsayed/AP

For more than 11 years, I told myself it was too early to grieve. My father, Ali Mustafa, was arrested by Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria on 2 July 2013 and disappeared. Since that day, we have had no word, no trace, nothing.

Every morning since he was taken I made my first thought after waking up: “He is alive.” Every night I went to sleep repeating it.