What Has Happened in Bashar al-Assad's 'Horrific' Prisons?

With the doors of Syrian prisons opening after the 54-year rule of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, which instilled fear in critics, opponents, and ordinary people, thousands of prisoners have been released in recent days, stepping into the outside world in disbelief. Some of these prisoners had been kept in quarantine and ignorance to the extent that they did not even know that Hafez al-Assad was no longer in power and that for 24 years, Syria was ruled by his son, Bashar al-Assad, who has also left. Raghid Ahmad al-Tatari, a pilot who refused to carry out Hafez al-Assad's order to bomb the city of Hama in 1981, was released after 43 years. The crackdown on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama in 1981 and 1982 left tens of thousands dead. While opposition forces have taken power following Bashar al-Assad's flight and the collapse of his regime, they emphasize that the release of prisoners is a priority for them. Rami Abdulrahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reporting from Britain, stated that in the 11 days of opposition advances in the cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus, 'tens of thousands of prisoners' have been freed. The people of Syria and human rights organizations affiliated with the opposition are waiting to see if the hundreds of thousands of missing persons over the past decades, especially those missing during the long civil war, are among those released. What will be the fate of Syria after Bashar al-Assad? Children, anxious women, and a writer who was supposed to be executed on Sunday. The entry of opposition forces into the notorious 'Saydnaya' prison near Damascus on the morning of Sunday, December 9, hours after the rebels reached the capital, depicted heartbreaking moments; initially, a child three years old or younger was seen in the prison corridor, followed by hundreds of women with children in cells that were not easy to unlock. According to local media, this child was born in prison. The guards had fled, and the rebels were shooting at the locks to open the cells. Teenage girls and young women could not believe that these individuals had come to free them and were anxious. Men told the women who were screaming not to be afraid, Bashar al-Assad is gone. Some women held their young children or slightly older ones in their arms or beside them. Male prisoners, barefoot, mostly thin and emaciated, some clutching a small bundle of their belongings, reached the street and asked people what had happened; one responded while filming, saying, 'The regime has fallen.' The astonished and joyful prisoners, seeing sunlight that had not touched their bodies for a long time, wept and struggled to comprehend the new situation. Bashar Barhoum, a 63-year-old writer who had been imprisoned for seven months, was supposed to be executed on Sunday morning. It was unclear whether he had even been tried. A miracle happened for him, and he realized that the men who entered the prison had come to free him and other prisoners. Barhoum incredulously stepped into the street and joined the people celebrating Bashar al-Assad's flight and the 'overthrow of the regime,' asking those without phones to contact his wife. The rebels excitedly recorded the date of this day in their mobile phone videos in the prison control room, which showed the cells. The 'White Helmets' group entered the prison to investigate possible underground cells in this prison. Torture 'on an industrial scale,' executions, and starvation. Syrian prisons have been infamous since Hafez al-Assad's rule; Bashar al-Assad's father, who came to power in a coup in 1970, was associated with widespread executions and arrests, imprisoning tens of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of other opponents and critics during his 30-year rule, including after the massacre of tens of thousands in Hama province in 1982. According to opponents, the intelligence apparatus that Hafez al-Assad expanded to maintain his regime both domestically and abroad was not only a tool to confront opponents and critics and potential rivals but also systematically pursued terrorizing the people. According to Lina Khatib from the Chatham House think tank in London, the security apparatus and notorious prisons cultivated a culture of fear to maintain control and suppress political opponents. The security apparatus viewed imprisonment and torture as a key means of suppressing dissent. With Bashar al-Assad coming to power, a trained ophthalmologist from top British universities who lived in the West, there was hope that the methods of his father’s era had ended, but according to human rights organizations and opponents, he was no different from his father. Thousands of protesters were arrested during the 'Arab Spring' uprising in 2011. As the civil war escalated, the security and intelligence apparatus grew, leading to the establishment of more detention centers and prisons that, according to human rights groups, employed brutal torture on an 'industrial scale.' 'Human slaughterhouse'; crematorium. Human rights organizations identified more than 27 detention centers and prisons during Bashar al-Assad's rule. However, the most notorious of them was 'Saydnaya,' which housed its first prisoners in 1980 and is a military prison located 30 kilometers north of Damascus under the Ministry of Defense and military police, becoming a symbol of the regime's brutal repression over 44 years. According to Amnesty International and other groups, dozens were executed weekly in Saydnaya. It is estimated that from 2011, when the people's uprising began in Daraa and was immediately suppressed, until 2016, the hardest years of the civil war, at least 13,000 people were executed in this prison. Five years later, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees from the civil war had died in this prison due to torture and execution. The nickname of this prison in the Syrian people's language was 'human slaughterhouse'; a place where satellite images in 2017 showed the existence of a crematorium that, according to opponents, was used to burn the bodies of the dead and executed individuals that the regime had disappeared and then eliminated. The Trump administration examined evidence of the burning of the bodies of thousands of executed prisoners in this crematorium. Stuart Jones, the former deputy assistant secretary of state for Middle Eastern affairs, confidently stated that the regime's crimes had been meticulously documented, hanging at least 50 prisoners daily, and the crematorium was an attempt to cover up the indiscriminate killings. A former political prisoner told Amnesty International that prisoners in Saydnaya were forced to choose between being killed themselves or killing one of their relatives or friends. He said he had been transferred from a prison where prisoners were forced to cannibalism to Saydnaya and only then realized that the first prison was 'heaven.' Reports from human rights organizations indicate ongoing beatings, sexual assaults, and beheadings in Saydnaya and other prisons of the father and son Assad. Prisoners testified to deprivation of water and food and sometimes being forced to assault others. Why did Bashar al-Assad hate the 'Damascus Spring'? The 'Caesar' report. A Syrian army soldier nicknamed 'Caesar' transferred over 53,000 photos outside in 2013, which human rights groups say confirm horrific torture and the deliberate starvation of prisoners. The images he revealed to the world were the first evidence of the deaths of some prisoners for their heartbroken relatives. 'Caesar' photographed the bodies of the executed and presented an unprecedented archive to the world. The 2014 report on human rights violations in Syria, during the peak years of the civil war, referenced 'Caesar's' images and became known as the 'Caesar Report,' the text of which was written by a team of international lawyers, including the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who prosecuted former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The Assad government rejected all reports from human rights organizations, labeling them as fake and part of a campaign to defame and discredit the regime. Waiting for the missing. On Sunday, hundreds of families waited outside Saydnaya prison and other security, intelligence, and judicial centers to see if they might find loved ones who had been missing for years among those released. One of them was Bassam Masri, whose son was imprisoned at the beginning of the uprising in 2011 and he had not seen him since. A woman named Heba had come to perhaps get news of her brother, her brother-in-law, and possibly her mother's cousin, whom government forces had abducted years ago. Al-Arabiya network showed images of an elderly mother embracing her son outside the prison after 14 years. This family had fled Syria to Jordan and had driven to Damascus to get news of their son. A man, shaven and trembling, was so tortured that he could hardly speak when the doors of Saydnaya prison opened on Sunday. It was clear he had lost his memory. His family said he had disappeared 13 years ago while he was a medical student. Another woman, whose son was arrested 12 years ago at the age of 18 and she had not seen him since, was worried that her child might be dead. Many Syrians, after years of ignorance, suddenly learned or were informed by Assad's officials that their loved ones had been executed years ago. Abdul-Kafi al-Hamdo, who fled from Aleppo to Idlib in 2016, was filming a documentary on Sunday while talking to anxious and waiting families outside the Damascus prison. Omar al-Shughr, a young man who himself was detained for three years at the age of 15 without knowing why, was freed through the tireless efforts of his mother and went to Sweden, where he recounted the torture against himself and prisoners while witnessing the release of prisoners from afar. He had established an organization in Sweden to defend prisoners but always lived in fear of retaliation from Assad's intelligence agents and being killed. But it was not only Syrians in the Assads' prisons. Ali Hassan al-Ali, a Lebanese man, disappeared 40 years ago when he was 18 while registering for military service after moving from his hometown in northern Lebanon. His family identified him from television footage and has been struggling to bring him back to Lebanon. The Lebanese hope that at least 560 to 622 of their compatriots who disappeared during the years of the Syrian army's presence in Lebanon will be among those released. One of them is Boutros Khand, a Lebanese politician who disappeared 32 years ago, and there are suggestions that he may be in Syrian custody.