DAMASCUS: Syrian rescuers searched a jail synonymous with the worst atrocities of ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s rule, as people in the capital flocked to a central square on Monday to celebrate their country’s freedom.

Assad fled Syria as fighters swept into the capital, bringing to a spectacular end on Sunday five decades of brutal rule by his clan over a country ravaged by one of the deadliest wars of the century.

He oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 500,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes.

At the core of the system of rule that Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent by jailing those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party’s line.

Social media groups alight with Syrians sharing images of detainees reportedly brought out from the dungeons, some posting calls for help finding their missing relatives

On Monday, rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets group said they were searching for potential secret doors or basements in Saydnaya prison, though they said there was no immediate sign that anyone was trapped. “We are working with all our energy to reach a new hope, and we must be prepared for the worst,” the organisation said in a statement, urging families of the missing to have “patience”.

Aida Taha, aged 65, said she had been “roaming the streets like a madwoman” in search of her brother, who was arrested in 2012. “We’ve been oppressed long enough, we want our children back,” she said.

While Syria has been at war for over 13 years, the government’s collapse ended up coming in a matter of days, with a lightning offensive launched by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Rooted in Syria’s branch of Al Qaeda, HTS is proscribed by Western governments as a terrorist group.

‘Nightmare’

In central Damascus on Monday, despite all the uncertainty over the future, the joy was palpable. “It’s indescribable, we never thought this nightmare would end, we are reborn,” 49-year-old Rim Ramadan, a civil servant at the finance ministry, said. “We were afraid for 55 years of speaking, even at home, we used to say the walls had ears,” Ramadan said, as people honked their car horns and rebels fired their guns into the air. “We feel like we’re living a dream,” she added.

During the offensive launched on Nov 27, rebels wrested city after city from Assad’s control, opening the gates of prisons along the way and freeing thousands of people, many of them held on political charges.

Social media groups were alight with Syrians sharing images of detainees reportedly brought out from the dungeons, in a collective effort to reunite families with their newly released loved ones, some of whom had been missing for years.

Others, like Fadwa Mahmoud, whose husband and son are missing, posted calls for help finding their missing relatives. “Where are you, Maher and Abdel Aziz, it’s time for me to hear your news, oh God, please come back, let my joy become complete,” wrote Mahmoud, herself a former detainee.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2024