BBCAdra is a strange kind of neighborhood cemetery – two solitary graves sitting on a bumpy, empty lot, covered with sparse grass.
For many years, this was an area tightly controlled by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
Now, a week after their escape, a concrete slab in one corner of this empty cemetery has been moved to reveal a shallow grave containing at least half a dozen white bags, labeled with names and prison numbers. .
Khaled al Hamad, a nearby resident, was trying to pull out his bag when we arrived.
He showed us three that he had opened. Each contains a human skull and bones. The writing on the sack shows that these are the remains of two female prisoners and one male prisoner.
It is unclear how they died or whether this is evidence of criminal abuses by the Assad regime.
But Khaled didn’t need convincing. He is searching for two of his brothers, Jihad and Hussein, who were captured by Assad’s notorious air force intelligence a decade ago. They have not been heard of since.
“Some people were taken to an area called ‘driving school’ and liquidated there,” he said. “I think this happened to my brothers. They’re probably in some bags buried here.”
We shared this information with Human Rights Watch in Syria, which said it is investigating reports of prisoner remains being dumped in similar bags elsewhere.
Assad’s fall has unleashed a wave of hope from families abandoned for decades without any way to find out what happened to their loved ones.
“If you ever pass by here [in Assad’s time]you can’t stop, you can’t look up,” Khaled said.
“In the past, cars were speeding. If you stopped, they would come up, put a plastic bag over your head and take you away.”
Tens of thousands of families like his are now searching for loved ones who disappeared into Assad’s notorious prison system or into the country’s military interrogation centers.
Some were taken to Mazzeh military air base in Damascus.
The site, once an important buffer zone between Assad and the rebels, is now abandoned. Discarded military boots littered the tarmac, a live rocket lay on the ground, the only signs of life were the new guards at the gate: the young militia men of Hayat Tahrir al -Sham (HTS), the group that took control of Syria last week.
They showed us the torture chamber used by Assad’s forces – including a metal pole to tie prisoners’ feet for beatings and a set of wires next to the switchboard.
“Here they electrocute the prisoners,” the guard commander, Abu Jarrah, told me. “These are electric cables – the investigator sits here, the prison guard puts them on the prisoner and turns them on.
“The prisoner lost his mind and confessed everything. They told the interrogator to write whatever he wanted, hoping it would stop.”
Abu Jarrah also said that the 400 women detained here were regularly raped and that children were born in the prison.
The only thing more painful than finding your parents or children among the records here is not finding them at all.
In the building next door, families were struggling to find miniature photographs scattered on the concrete floor – face after face staring at the silent and cold witnesses of the years. months of Assad’s rule.
Among them sobbing was the mother of Mahmoud Saed Hussein, a Kurd from al-Qamishli.
“Yesterday, we saw he was booked at the air base prison,” she told me. “We came but couldn’t find him. I searched for him for 11 years, looking from prison to prison.”
“They all look like my son,” she cried, pointing to the pile of photos on the floor. “May God burn Assad’s heart, as he burned ours.”
Beyond them, three rooms were packed to the rafters with files opened one after another on top of each other. Several people were crouching over a mountain of documents several meters high that covered the floor.
Assad’s regime is meticulous in documenting its brutality – a vast bureaucratic apparatus of terror that makes the scale of its actions all too clear, but in which the stories of individuals are often overlooked. lost or submerged.
“What are these notes?” an angry woman. “No one is helping us. We want someone to come and examine these documents with us. How can I find him among these many prison records?”
The lack of any orderly system means vital evidence is being lost every day at locations across Syria – information about the missing people, but also any possible connection between the Assad regime and foreign governments such as the US or UK, both of which are accused of benefiting from America’s extraordinary extradition policy, in which terrorism suspects are taken for questioning in foreign countries. use torture.
Human rights groups have accused the British government of turning a blind eye to America’s actions in the war on terror, with the US sending detainees to several countries in the Middle East, including Syria.
Outside, the air base’s silent hangars are littered with the charred remains of Russian-made aircraft and radars, battered by repeated Israeli airstrikes over the past week.
Assad’s departure has shifted the fragile balance of power between Syria’s conflicting groups and the countries that back them, including Türkiye, Iran and the United States.
This has never been just a war in Syria, and outside powers are still involved in what happens here.
Syrians are adamant that it is time for them to govern themselves without anyone telling them what to do.
As we left, a young HTS fighter climbed onto the roof to slash at the portrait of Assad hanging above the interrogation building.
He grinned at his comrades watching from below, as photos and documents from the regime’s military files fluttered around their boots.
Assad’s fall has raised unanswered questions about Syria’s future, but it has also left many unanswered questions about the past.
