ABC NEWS | Published December 10, 2024
Tens of thousands came to Saydnaya Prison from all over Syria after the fall of former President Bashar Assad to search for their loved ones
DAMASCUS, Syria — They came from all over Syria, tens of thousands. The first place they rushed to after the fall of their longtime tormentor, former President Bashar Assad, was here: Saydnaya Prison, a place so notorious for its horrors it was long known as “the slaughterhouse.”
For the past two days, all have been looking for signs of loved ones who disappeared years or even decades ago into the secretive, sprawling prison just outside Damascus.
But hope gave way to despair Monday. People opened the heavy iron doors lining the hallways to find cells inside empty. With sledgehammers, shovels and drills, men pounded holes in floors and walls, looking for what they believed were secret dungeons, or chasing sounds they thought they heard from underground. They found nothing.
Insurgents freed dozens of people from the Saydnaya military prison on Sunday when Damascus fell. Since then, almost no one has been found.
“Where is everyone? Where are everyone’s children? Where are they?” said Ghada Assad, breaking down in tears.
She had rushed from her Damascus home to the prison on the capital’s outskirts, hoping to find her brother. He was detained in 2011, the year that protests first erupted against the former president’s rule – before they turned into a long, grueling civil war. She didn’t know why he was arrested.
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SOURCE: www.abcnews.go.com
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The Sednaya military prison is filled with desperate people seeking news of their loved ones, clinging to the rumor that thousands of prisoners remain in underground cells
A man holds a bloody rope in Sednaya prison on Monday.Getty Images (Getty Images)
EL PAIS | Published December 10, 2024
The image, with the rawness of when nothing is staged, is chilling. Thousands of Syrians walk in a hurry uphill for miles (traffic jams prevent them from getting close) to reach Sednaya as soon as possible, the military prison nicknamed “the human slaughterhouse” where the regime of Bashar al-Assad killed thousands of people and where only now, after the fall of the dictatorship, can they arrive en masse, desperately seeking news of their loved ones, clinging to the rumor that there are still thousands of prisoners in underground cells.
Women with tears in their eyes, families with folders with the names and ID numbers of loved ones they haven’t heard from for years, and a desperate question from those going up to those going back down: “Have you found them?” A kind of procession towards the horror of a prison where the men dig with whatever they have — even with an iron bar — in search of a supposed secret entrance to the basement, and where they show a cell where prisoners were kept (alive or dead, they say) and the ropes used to torture them that their jailers hastily left behind.
Sitting on the dusty ground, an elderly woman shouts at the rebel fighters, who opened the prison gates on Sunday to free the inmates and who are now climbing in with Kalashnikov rifles slung on their shoulders: “Come on up, come on up! For what? You came years too late!”
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SOURCE: www.english.elpais.com
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