Syrian rebel forces arrived at additional cells in the notorious Saydnaya prison on Sunday, freeing more prisoners from inhumane conditions after seizing the capital Damascus and toppling the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
In video broadcast online by Al Jazeera News, rebel forces can be seen tearing down walls with sledgehammers after discovering prison cells that appeared to be hidden. The images show hundreds of men leaving the overcrowded prison.
“We are kept in the dormitory, with 25 people crammed in,” a freed prisoner can be heard telling a rebel fighter in the Al Jazeera video. “We only know a few of each other’s names because we are forced to sit and look down all the time.”
The released detainee, from Aleppo, said he had been imprisoned since 2019 for trying to escape the regime’s military service. He said he was once hit in the head with a hammer by Syrian regime guards and detailed the brutality of Syrian forces, who had held control of the prison just days before.
“The day before yesterday, at 4 am, they took us out. They took 60 people out of our block. Two [guardas das forças do regime] with pump-action shotguns, they escorted us and took three of our group, saying they were being taken for execution,” said the released detainee in the video.
Other social media videos circulating Sunday showed women and at least one child being released from prison.
Meanwhile, video from outside the prison walls shows people searching for their imprisoned loved ones.
A 2023 report by the United Nations Human Rights Council detailed “widespread and systematic patterns of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” in Syrian regime detention centers.
In 2017, an Amnesty International report stated that around 13,000 people were hanged between 2011 and 2015 at Saydnaya Prison in a covert crackdown on dissent against the Assad regime.
Understand the conflict in Syria
Syria’s civil war began during the Arab Spring in 2011, when the regime of Bashar al-Assad suppressed a pro-democracy uprising.
The country was plunged into full-scale conflict when a rebel force was formed, known as the Free Syrian Army, to fight government troops.
Furthermore, the Islamic State, a terrorist group, also managed to gain a foothold in the country and came to control 70% of Syrian territory.
Fighting escalated as other regional actors and world powers — from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United States to Russia — joined in, escalating the country’s war into what some observers described as a “proxy war.”
Russia has allied with Bashar al-Assad’s government to fight the Islamic State and rebels, while the United States has led an international coalition to repel the terrorist group.
After a ceasefire agreement in 2020, the conflict remained largely “dormant”, with minor clashes between the rebels and the Assad regime.
More than 300,000 civilians have been killed in more than a decade of war, according to the UN, and millions of people have been displaced across the region.
The fall of the Assad family regime in photos
This content was originally published in Syrian rebels free prisoners in detention near Damascus on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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