Reports of people trapped underground at Syria’s Saydnaya prison have been investigated

The Syrian civil defense group known as the White Helmets said it was investigating reports from survivors of the country’s notorious Saydnaya prison that many people were being held in secret cells under ground.

Writing on X, the group said it had deployed five “specialized emergency teams” to the prison, who were being helped by a tour guide familiar with the prison’s layout.

Saydnaya was one of the prisons liberated when rebels took control of the country.

Authorities in Damascus province said efforts were continuing to free prisoners, some of whom “almost suffocated” because of lack of ventilation.

The Damascus Rural Authority has called on social media for former soldiers and prison staff of the Assad regime to provide the rebels with the codes for electronic underground doors.

They said they could not open them to free “more than 100,000 detainees who could be seen on CCTV screens”.

Video was circulated online and through news outlets including Al Jazeera of what appeared to be attempts to reach lower areas of the prison.

In it, a man can be seen using a type of pole to knock down the wall below, revealing a dark space behind.

Other footage shows prisoners being released – including a young child detained with his mother. He appeared in a video of the released women posted by the Türkiye-based Association of Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP).

“He [Assad] fell. Don’t be afraid,” a voice says in the video, seemingly trying to reassure the women that they are safe now.

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.

Rebel forces have swept through Syria, freeing 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 recently 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.