Sunday (08.12.24). THE Bashar al-Assad leaves her Syria. The news of the fall of the tyrannical regime sparks celebrations in Damascus and across the country.
Within minutes the images coming from the now free Syria are making the rounds on the internet. However, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Syria seems to be fighting for its very existence, as no one can guarantee that the disparate forces now fighting for power and being influenced by foreign actors with different interests, they will manage to form a common front.
And while the streets in Damascus are “dressed” by thousands of Syrians celebrating the next day in Syria, some families are anxious about the fate of their own who were prisoners of the Sednaya prison, known as a “human slaughterhouse”.
Sednaya is a large military prison on the outskirts of Damascus where the Syrian government holds hundreds of thousands of people.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that “the doors of the notorious Sednaya prison, known as a ‘human slaughterhouse’, were opened to thousands of prisoners imprisoned by the security apparatus throughout the regime’s rule.”
After over 10 hours of work! The doors of the “Red” prison of Sednaya are finally broken! New waves of detainees are being liberated!
The man filming is looking for his family while documenting this. “How could we believe this is happening”. #Syria
pic.twitter.com/cuUGC659Vq— Zaina Erhaim (@ZainaErhaim) December 8, 2024
Sednaya is seen as a symbol of the brutality of the Assad regime, a place where tens of thousands of opponents of the Syrian president’s rule have suffered extreme torture and abuse.
Footage circulating on social media shows families outside the prison, desperately searching for information about their missing loved ones, hoping to either be reunited with them or confirm their fate.
Teams of skilled rescuers tried to get people trapped underground cells up to 30 meters underground. With cameras recording underground cells but unable to locate, or in some cases unlock, rescue crews conclude that a number of prisoners in the so-called “red wing”, the third basement of the prison, they had been “left to rot alive”. There was no exit from the cells, as it had been built.
The rescue attempt to free prisoners from the basements of the Zadnaya prison in Damascus.
It’s unbelievable how deeply the Assad regime buried its opponents. pic.twitter.com/jQH5twYer8
— Breaking News (@TheNewsTrending) December 8, 2024
The Damascus provincial administration appealed on social media to former soldiers and prison workers of the Assad regime to provide their rebel forces codes for the electronic underground doors.
They say they were unable to open them in order to release “more than 100,000 prisoners seen on CCTV screens’.
Five teams of trained dogs and medical personnel, led by someone familiar with the prison’s layout, were deployed to free the prisoners.
Video has been released online and by news outlets, one of which appears to be attempts to gain access to lower sections of the prison. In it, a man appears to breaks a low wall, revealing a dark space behind. In this space, one underground room without windows and doors, as described, people had been left for to die in torture.
If the international community wants to rescue some credibility with #Syria’s people, it should send specialists to #Sednaya Prison in #Damascus immediately — there are 100s, possibly 1000s of prisoners stuck 2-3 layers underground, behind electronic locks & concealed doors. pic.twitter.com/16xxmDbD4b
— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) December 9, 2024
In the red wing, the insurgents report finding huge torture chambers with piles of corpses and human bones, with iron presses which they say were used to melt the victims’ bodies so that they could easily disappear.