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NYTimes
New York Times
14 Dec 2024
Christina GoldbaumDaniel Berehulak


NextImg:Syria Shudders as Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light

People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”

In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.

“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”

ImagePeople walks along a lane near prison buildings, with barbed wire in the foreground.
Syrians approaching Sednaya, the Assad’s regime most notorious prison.
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They came by the thousands, hoping for news of relatives who had disappeared inside the Assad government’s security apparatus.
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The prison has become a symbol of the ruthlessness of former President Bashar al-Assad’s government, and the center of some of the worst atrocities committed during his rule.

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