Syrian civilians and humanitarian organizations are searching prisons filled with prisoners, many of whom are political, after the sudden collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s brutal regime.
The regime subjected more than 130,000 people to arbitrary arrest and detention, according to a report in August by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization that began its tally when the civil war started in 2011. The arrests were carried out in secrecy, with families often left wondering what happened to their relatives.
With the collapse of the regime, civilians and humanitarian institutions have begun trying to rescue those prisoners.
The White Helmets, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Syrian civilians, said Monday it was continuing to search the Sednayah prison for “hidden doors or undiscovered basements,” which “could potentially hold detainees beyond those released on Sunday.” No evidence has been found to indicate additional prisoners were held there.
On Sunday, the organization said it deployed five specialized teams of “search and rescue units, wall-breaching specialists, iron door-opening crews, trained dog units, and medical responders.”
The prison, which is located north of Damascus, was coined the “human slaughterhouse.”
Many of the political prisoners who filled those jails had been held since the onset of the Syrian civil war, which began more than a decade ago.
The Biden administration is working with local partners to try and locate American journalist Austin Tice, who is believed to have been held by the Assad regime for more than a decade, though his whereabouts remain a mystery. Biden acknowledged in comments over the weekend that the United States believes he’s alive, but they still need to “identify where he is.”
“This is a top priority for us — to find Austin Tice, to locate the prison where he may be held, get him out, get him home safely to his family,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America. ”We are talking through the Turks and others to people on the ground in Syria to say, ‘Help us with this. Help us get Austin Tice home.’”
Sam Goodwin is a U.S. citizen who was detained by the Assad regime for about two months in 2019. He is one of the few Americans to see the inside of one of Assad’s prisons to later be freed by the regime.
He told the Washington Examiner on Monday that he has already spoken with friends whom he met while being detained in two different Syrian prisons. Goodwin said he spoke with a friend who was released from prison over the weekend, explaining that his friend went on to see his mother for the first time in a decade.
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“Overall, I’m optimistic. I have been in touch with quite a few of the other inmates that I met,” he said. “One of them I FaceTimed with yesterday … he called me yesterday on FaceTime, and he said that yesterday he was with his mom for the first time in 10 years. Just overwhelming joy there.”
Opposition forces carried out an overwhelming offensive push over the last week and a half, which culminated in the fall of the Assad regime that had been in power for more than five decades.