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The Assad regime ran a network of torture centers that swallowed up tens of thousands of Syrians. Now that the rebels have opened the gates, many see a chance to learn of the detainees’ fates.
By Christina GoldbaumRaja Abdulrahim and Muhammad Haj Kadour
Christina Goldbaum reported from Damascus, Syria, and Raja Abdulrahim and Muhammad Haj Kadour from Aleppo, Syria.
- Dec. 9, 2024, 9:20 a.m. ET
Crowds descended on a prison on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Monday, desperate to learn the fate of friends and relatives detained at a place that symbolized terror and death under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Some hailed taxis or waited for buses from the city to the prison, Sednaya, which opened over the weekend as Mr. al-Assad fell. Others packed into cars, inching through traffic. Many appeared conflicted by hope and dread amid the euphoria that has gripped Damascus since Mr. al-Assad fled to Russia.
“Seizing the city is a joy — we are joyous,” said one rebel fighter, Mohammad Bakir, who sat in the back of a mud-caked car en route to the prison, his rifle tucked between his knees. He said he had not heard from his mother, brother and cousin since they disappeared in 2012 after they protested against the government and were presumably detained.
“But the real victory will be when I find my family,” Mr. Bakir, 42, said above the din of car horns.
Prisons were central to Mr. al-Assad’s ability to crush the civilian uprising that began in 2011 and the rebellion that followed. He set up an industrial-scale system of arbitrary arrests and torture prisons, according to reports by human rights groups.
More than 130,000 people were subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention by the government, according to a report in August by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a nonprofit, which began its count when the conflict started in 2011. The network said that more than 15,000 people had died “due to torture” by government forces from 2011 to July this year.
