Syria’s liberated political prisons reveal grim reality of Bashar Assad’s regime of torture

Former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutal regime of imprisonment and torture is on full display this week as victorious rebels dig through the dictator’s now-liberated political prisons.

Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani vowed to dissolve the Assad regime’s remnant security forces as well as close prisons that had been used to house political dissidents.

Thousands of Syrians stormed Assad’s various prison facilities across the country as his regime fell in hopes of releasing their incarcerated friends and family members. Thousands were released alive, but others were found dead and still others remain missing.

U.S. prosecutors named two Syrian officials who they say ran a torture facility at Mezzeh air force base in the Syrian capital, Damascus. The U.S. alleges that their victims included political prisoners, peaceful protesters and a 26-year-old American woman who was later believed to have been executed.

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A torn portrait of Bashir al-Assad is seen inside the Presidential Palace on Dec. 10, 2024 in Damascus, Syria (Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images)

The U.S. indictment names Jamil Hassan, director of the Syrian air force’s intelligence branch, who prosecutors say oversaw a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air force base in the capital, Damascus, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, who prosecutors say ran the prison.

The most notorious of Assad’s prison facilities was Saydnaya Prison, however, which lies just outside Damascus.

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Syrian citizens have flocked to the prison in the days since Assad’s fall on Sunday, breaking open cells and scouring what images reveal to be a labyrinthine prison. While dozens were freed on Sunday, virtually no one has been found since.

Investigators, civilians, and rebels search through Sednaya Prison, hoping to uncover hidden compartments where detainees might still be held. Outside, hundreds of families anxiously wait for news of their missing or disappeared loved ones, clinging to the hope of a reunion. More than 30,000 people were killed over decades in the “human slaughterhouse” outside Damascus, where the regime sought to suppress dissent by execution. (Sandro BasiliAbaca/Sipa via AP Images)

“Where is everyone? Where are everyone’s children? Where are they?” said Ghada Assad, breaking down in tears.

Syrians are continuing to search the facility, however, searching for hidden cells as well as documents that might shed light on their family members’ fates.

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“There is not a home, there is not a woman in Syria who didn’t lose a brother, a child or a husband,” said Khairiya Ismail, 54, said of the prison and Assad’s rule.

People inspect documents they found in the infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, on Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. Crowds are gathering to enter the prison, known as the “human slaughterhouse,” after thousands of inmates were released following the rebels’ overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

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An estimated 150,000 people were detained or went missing in Syria since 2011. Tens of thousands of them are believed to have gone through Saydnaya, according to the Associated Press.

Amnesty International estimated that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 people being held in the prison as of 2017. The organization also claimed that there were routine mass executions.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.