By Maya Gebeily
SEDNAYA, Syria (Reuters) – As households desperately scoured the filthy cells of Syria's banned Sednaya jail on Monday for any signal of family members held lengthy after its doorways had been opened by rebels, hope discovering their lacking family members started to fade.
Hundreds of prisoners emerged from President Bashar al-Assad's ruthless detention system after his overthrow on Sunday, generally in tearful reunions with kinfolk who believed they’d been executed years earlier.
However numerous households nonetheless roamed the darkish corridors and hidden cells of the labyrinthine complicated looking for family members detained for collaborating in protests, defying authorities or just expressing their displeasure.
Ahmed Najjar had come to Damascus from Aleppo, hoping to seek out his brother's two youngsters, captured by Assad's safety forces in 2012.
“We’re trying. They are saying there’s an underground jail,” he stated.
Rumors unfold on Sunday that 1000’s of different detainees had been nonetheless imprisoned in inaccessible underground cells.
The White Helmets reduction group, which has been looking out buildings destroyed by airstrikes for years, deployed a group.
“They’d a card of a defected Syrian military officer, they destroyed a wall and located nothing,” stated one of many rescuers. “They broke for a second and located a door.”
However by Monday afternoon, there was no signal of different prisoners.
Exterior, Intsar al-Jaber waited for information. The 45-year-old girl's brother and cousin had been imprisoned in Sednaya however she had not been allowed to see them since 2014.
“They then informed me that my brother was lifeless and that I shouldn’t come again. [They said] “Your brother is a terrorist and he’s lifeless, so there’s nothing for you right here.” Don't come.'” However she continued to attend and hope.
At a mosque on the highway to the jail, folks recorded their names and telephone numbers in case imprisoned kinfolk had been discovered.
A lady stated she noticed her son in a screenshot of prisoners being launched on Sunday.
THE SEDNAYA CREMATORIUM FOR HANGED PENSIONERS
Rights teams have reported mass executions in Syrian prisons, and the US stated in 2017 it had recognized a brand new crematorium in Sednaya for hanged prisoners. The torture was broadly documented.
Movies have been launched exhibiting prisoners with shaved heads, nearly skeletal, barely capable of give their names or say the place they got here from. Reuters has not been capable of confirm all of them, however the large-scale launch of prisoners will not be in dispute.
Contained in the solitary confinement cells, there was water and dust on the concrete flooring. Everybody had a single steel bowl for meals. Feces had been mendacity in all places.
Folks looking out the jail searched via discarded papers and requested former inmates in the event that they knew of routes to different flooring, whereas others tore down partitions or dug up the ground in the hunt for hidden cells .
On a number of events, a breakthrough revealed a hidden hall, prompting bursts of gunfire from the rebels to alert the 1000’s ready.
Every time, a crowd rushed ahead. One girl shouted, “Son, I’m coming, I’m coming,” whereas one other begged, “God, please don’t disappoint me.”
A person named Mazen stated Assad's police took away 10 members of his household, together with his uncle, brother-in-law, siblings and cousins.
“We acquired a video right here of a secret door. I gave it to the rescuers. They’re making an attempt to dig however they don’t have anything but,” he stated.
Fadel Abdul Ghany, who heads the Syrian Community for Human Rights, stated the truth that jail doorways had been merely opened made it harder to seek out detainees and allowed actual criminals to be launched alongside the political prisoners.
“They need to handle this as nicely, similar to they attempt to handle different issues, to maintain issues underneath management,” he stated.
Exterior the jail, the place site visitors as soon as moved briskly, passengers' eyes averted, a protracted line of vehicles waited to enter whereas others trekked via the scrubby countryside and reduce via barbed wire to hitch the looking out crowd. inside.
Certainly one of them, Radwan Eid, nicknamed Sednaya “human butchery”.
“The blood that has been shed right here can not simply circulate,” he stated. “They must be held accountable.”
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