Footage shows people leaving Assad’s infamous prison

Footage shows prisoners being freed from Syria’s most notorious military prison, Saydnaya, after rebels took control of the country.

Video verified by AFP shows Syrians rushing to see if their relatives are among those released from Saydnaya, where thousands of opposition supporters are said to have been tortured and executed. decide under the Assad regime or not.

Among those pictured free are women, including a mother with a young child, who left their cells as rebels tried to break the locks on other cells holding dozens more women. female. clip posted by The Association of Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) is based in Türkiye.

“He (Assad) has fallen. Don’t be afraid,” a voice in the video can be heard, seemingly trying to reassure the women that they are now safe.

As rebels swept through Syria, they freed prisoners from government prisons along the way.

During the civil war that began in 2011, government forces detained hundreds of thousands of people in detention camps, where human rights groups said torture was routine.

On Saturday Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said it had freed more than 3,500 detainees from Homs Military Prison as the group took over the city.

As they entered the capital hours later early Sunday morning, HTS announced “the end of the era of tyranny in Saydnaya prison”, which has become a byword for black abuses darkest in the Assad era.

In its 2022 report, ADMSP said Saydnaya “literally became a death camp” after the start of the civil war.

It is estimated that more than 30,000 detainees were executed or died due to torture, lack of medical care or starvation between 2011 and 2018. Citing accounts of several released prisoners In addition, at least 500 other detainees were executed between 2018 and 2021, it said.

2017, Amnesty International describes Saydnaya as a “murderer”in a report alleging that the executions were authorized by the Assad government.

The government at the time dismissed Amnesty’s claims as “baseless” and “without truth”, insisting that all executions in Syria followed due process.

Video footage cited by Reuters shows rebels shooting the lock on Saydnaya prison’s gate and using more gunfire to open closed doors leading into cells. Men poured into the hallway.

Another video, which Reuters news agency said was filmed on the streets of Damascus, appeared to show newly freed prisoners running down the street.

In it, people ask a passerby what happened.

“We overthrew the regime,” they replied, making the former prisoner laugh with delight.

Of all the symbols of the Assad regime’s repressive nature, the network of prisons where those who expressed any form of dissent are disappeared casts the longest and darkest shadow. darkest.

In Saydnaya, torture, sexual assault and mass executions were the fate of thousands. Many never reappear, and their families often do not know for years whether they are alive or dead.

One of the survivors of the ordeal, Omar al-Shogre, told the BBC on Sunday about what he endured during three years of detention as a teenager.

“I know the pain, I know the loneliness and the despair you feel because the world lets you suffer and does nothing to change it,” he said.

“They forced the cousin I loved so much to torture me and they forced me to torture him. Otherwise we would both be executed.”

The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that more than 130,000 people have been detained in these conditions since 2011. But the history of these organizations aimed at stoking fear goes back much further.

Even in neighboring Lebanon, fear of disappearing into the dungeons of Syria remained pervasive during Damascus’s many years as the dominant foreign power.

The deep hatred for the Assad regime – both father and son – smolders beneath the surface in Syria largely because of this industrial-scale mechanism of torture, death and humiliation aimed at scaring the population must obey.

For that reason, the rebel factions in their lightning raid through Syria to overthrow President Assad made sure that every city they captured was taken to the central prison in each city and released with thousands of prisoners. Thousands of people were detained there.

The image of these people emerging into the light from the darkness that has enveloped some for decades will be one of the defining images of the fall of the Assad dynasty.