The first videos show them bewildered. They don’t know what’s happening. Their cells are being opened violently, but then no one is going to give them any punishment. It is the prisoners’ own relatives who are opening the cells to free them after months, and many of them, years of imprisonment. They shout with joy at finally being free, although they do not understand very well what is happening.
The Syrian opposition, after a lightning operation, has ended 54 years of the Assad dictatorship, and the dictatorial regime of Bashar al Assad has ended with the fall of Damascus.
“Ala is big!” is heard in the videos that spread on social networks. A video verified by Reuters showed recently freed prisoners running through the streets of Damascus, raising the fingers of both hands to show how many years they had been in prison, asking passersby what had happened, without immediately understanding that Assad had fallen. “We have overthrown the regime!” a voice shouts and a prisoner shouts and jumps for joy in the same video. A man watching the prisoners running through the streets at dawn put his hands on his head and exclaimed in astonishment: “Oh, my God, the prisoners!”
Other images show prisoners being released, including a small child who was being held with his mother. She appears in a video of women being released published by the Association of Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP), based in Türkiye, and reported by the BBC.
“He [Assad] has fallen. Don’t be afraid,” a voice says in the video, apparently trying to reassure the women that they are safe now.
Syria’s prisons, such as Saydnaya, north of Damascus, are famous for their harsh living conditions. Torture is systematic, according to human rights groups with testimonies from people who were imprisoned there. Secret executions have been recorded in more than two dozen centers run by the Syrian Intelligence services, as well as elsewhere.
Although these tortures were known in the country, it was not until 2013 when a Syrian military deserter, nicknamed ‘Caesar’, took more than 53,000 photographs that, according to human rights groups, showed evidence of torture, terrible health conditions and famine in Syrian prison facilities.
The strategy that Assad followed was to promote a feared security apparatus where prisons served to isolate opponents and, above all, to instill fear among the people, says Lina Khatib, associate researcher of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London study center Chatham House.
During the civil war that began in 2011, security forces held hundreds of thousands of people in detention camps where, according to international human rights organizations, torture was widespread. Families were often not informed of the fate of their loved ones.
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