Syrians from across the country flocked to the notorious Saydnaya prison in search of missing family members who vanished under Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The prison, once synonymous with arbitrary detention, torture, and murder, became a focal point for the desperate searches after rebels toppled Assad on Sunday.
Crowds descended upon the facility north of Damascus, with some leaving their cars to walk uphill past barbed wire fences and watchtowers. Many were searching for loved ones who had been forcibly disappeared since the 1970s. Saydnaya was one of the most infamous detention facilities, known as “the slaughterhouse,” where up to 13,000 people were hanged between 2011 and 2015.
After rebel fighters liberated Assad’s palaces, revealing his family’s opulent wealth and luxurious lifestyle, their prisons confirmed the horrors that Syrians have known for decades. The White Helmets deployed special teams to search for missing individuals but found no evidence of undiscovered secret cells or basements.
The Association of Detainees and the Missing in Seydnayah Prison stated that all prisoners had been released by Sunday afternoon, with estimates suggesting around 3,000 detainees were freed. However, the desperation of families combing through the prison’s documents and searching for clues reflects their agonizing wait for years without knowing what happened to their loved ones.
Reunions between newly freed prisoners and their ecstatic families have brought both joy and sadness. Former prisoner Suheil Hamawi said returning home made him realize he had missed out on decades of his life, including time with grandchildren he never got to experience.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/10/middleeast/syria-saydnaya-prison-missing-intl-hnk/index.html