THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE are being released from Syrian prisons after five decades of brutal Baath party rule came to an end yesterday.
Bashar al-Assad’s government fell 11 days after the rebels began a surprise advance, more than 13 years after Assad’s crackdown on anti-government protests ignited Syria’s civil war — which had become largely dormant until the rebel push.
At the core of the system of rule that Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent by jailing those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party’s line.
One of the most notorious prisons is Saydnaya, also known as the “human slaughterhouse,” which is located just north of the capital Damascus.
Some pardons had been granted in September, but the criterie for these was limited.
It was a concession made in response to a case in the International Court of Justice, where the Syrian regime was accused of systematic torture and detention.
During the offensive launched on 27 November, rebels wrested city after city from Assad’s control, opening the gates of prisons along the way and freeing thousands of people, many of them held on political charges.
Social media groups were alight with Syrians sharing images of detainees reportedly brought out from the dungeons, in a collective effort to reunite families with their newly released loved ones, some of whom had been missing for years.
Today, rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets group said they were searching for potential secret doors or basements in Saydnaya prison, though they said there was no immediate sign that anyone was trapped.
“We are working with all our energy to reach a new hope, and we must be prepared for the worst,” the organisation said in a statement, urging families of the missing to have “patience”.
Aida Taha, aged 65, said she had been “roaming the streets like a madwoman” in search of her brother, who was arrested in 2012.
“We’ve been oppressed long enough, we want our children back,” she said.
At the ICJ hearings, the Netherlands and Canada presented allegations over Syria’s violations of human rights, citing unlawful treatment of detainees, inhumane detention conditions, enforced disappearances, sexual and gender-based violence, violence against children, and the use of chemical weapons.
Assad oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 500,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes.
Amnesty International called for perpetrators of rights violations in Syria to face justice after this “historic opportunity” to end decades of abuses.
“Suspected perpetrators of crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations must be investigated, and if warranted, prosecuted for their crimes” Agnes Callamard, head of the London-based rights group said in a statement.
She added that any prosecutions should be in “fair trials and without the possibility of the death penalty”.
“The most important step is justice, and not retribution,” Callamard added, urging “opposition forces to break free from the violence of the past”.
In the statement, Callamard accused Assad and his father of subjecting Syrians to multiple “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” during their time in power.
“For the families of Syria’s tens of thousands of forcibly disappeared, the release of detainees from the many prisons across the country… raises the prospect that they could finally discover the fate of their missing loved ones,” Callamard said.
She urged the international community to “support the victims of the Assad government’s atrocities to secure justice and reparations for crimes under international law in Syria”.
How Assad might face justice remains unclear, especially after the Kremlin refused on Monday to confirm reports by Russian news agencies that he had fled to Moscow.
The Syrian embassy in Moscow raised the flag of the opposition, and the Kremlin said it would discuss the status of its bases in Syria with the new authorities.
Russia played an instrumental role in keeping Assad in power, directly intervening in the war starting in 2015 and providing air cover to the army on the ground as it sought to crush the rebellion.
Iran, another key ally of Assad, said it expected its “friendly” ties with Syria to continue, with its foreign minister saying the ousted president “never asked” for Tehran’s help against the rebel offensive.
Turkey, historically a backer of the opposition, called for an “inclusive” new government in Syria, as the sheer unpredictability of the situation began to settle in.
“It is not just Assad’s regime falling, it is also the question of what comes in its place?” said Aron Lund, a specialist at the Century International think tank.
While Syria’s war began with a crackdown on grassroots democracy protests, it morphed over time and drew in jihadists and foreign powers backing opposing sides.
Israel, which borders Syria, sent troops into a Syrian-held area of the buffer zone in the Golan Heights after Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step”.
Saar also said his country had struck “chemical weapons” in Syria, “in order that they will not fall in the hands of extremists”.
In northern Syria, a Turkish drone strike on a Kurdish-held area killed 11 civilians, six of them children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
With reporting by © AFP2024
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