DAMASCUS: When she heard the stunning news that militants had brought an end to Syria’s decades-old administration, Hayat Al-Turki headed for a prison that had become known as a slaughterhouse, praying that her brother and five more relatives held there were still alive.
But after four days of wandering around the notorious Sednaya complex, she is still desperate for any clues about their fate in a prison that human rights groups say is known for widespread torture and executions.
“I sleep here of course. I haven’t been home at all,” she said. She had been hopeful of finding her brother, uncle or a cousin, she said, but they, like the relatives of dozens of other Syrians searching the prison, seemed to have disappeared.
The 27-year-old found a document dated October 1, 2024, listing more than 7,000 prisoners of various categories.
“Where are they? Don’t they have to be in this prison?” she said, adding that a much smaller number had walked free.
Thousands of prisoners spilled out of President Bashar Assad’s merciless detention system after he was toppled on Sunday during a lightning advance by militants that overturned five decades of his family’s rule. Many detainees were met by tearful relatives who thought they had been executed years ago.
In Sednaya, a hanging noose reminded visitors of the dark days their relatives had spent there.
“I search the whole prison ... I go into a cell for less than five minutes, and I suffocate,” Turki said before going into another cell to search through belongings.
“Are these for my brother for example? Do I smell him in them? Or these? Or is this his blanket?” she said, holding up a picture of her sibling — lost for 14 years.
Rights groups have reported mass executions in Syria’s prisons, and the United States said in 2017 it had identified a new crematorium at Sednaya for hanged prisoners. Torture was widely documented.
The main commander of the militants who toppled Assad said on Wednesday that anyone involved in the torture or killing of detainees during Assad’s rule would be hunted down and pardons were out of the question.
“We will pursue them in Syria, and we ask countries to hand over those who fled so we can achieve justice,” Abu Mohammed Al-Golani said in a statement published on the Syrian state TV’s Telegram channel.
That provided little comfort to Turki, whose hopes of finding her brother were fading.
“I don’t know what he looks like, because I am seeing the photos of prisoners getting out, they are like skeletons,” she said.
“We are sure that people were here. Who are all these clothes and blankets for?“
Syrian woman haunts Assad’s notorious prison for clues of relatives’ fate
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Syrian woman haunts Assad’s notorious prison for clues of relatives’ fate
- After four days of wandering around the notorious Sednaya complex, she is still desperate for any clues
- The 27-year-old found a document dated October 1, 2024, listing more than 7,000 prisoners of various categories
‘Inclusive’ Syria transition vital to avert ‘new civil war’: UN envoy
- “My biggest concern is that the transition will create new contradictions in the manner that could lead to new civil strife and potentially a new civil war,” Geir Pedersen said
- Pedersen told AFP that Bashir’s appointment had “created some negative reactions among Syrians“
GENEVA: Syria’s transitional authorities must strive for a more inclusive process, bringing in different parties and communities to avoid new civil strife, the United Nations envoy for Syria said Wednesday.
“My biggest concern is that the transition will create new contradictions in the manner that could lead to new civil strife and potentially a new civil war,” Geir Pedersen told AFP in a brief interview in Geneva.
Longtime Syrian president Bashar Assad fled Syria on Sunday after a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) militant group and its allies, which brought to a spectacular end five decades of brutal rule by his clan.
Mohammad Al-Bashir, whom the militants appointed as the transitional head of government, has sought to allay fears over how Syria would be ruled and how minorities would be treated.
“Precisely because we are Islamic, we will guarantee the rights of all people and all sects in Syria,” he told Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
Pedersen told AFP that Bashir’s appointment had “created some negative reactions among Syrians, because they were afraid that this was a way for one group to monopolize power.”
“I think it’s extremely important that the new authorities in Damascus make clear what they want to achieve during these three months,” he said.
The initial signals, Pedersen said, indicated the transitional authorities “understood that they need to prepare for a more inclusive process,” bringing onboard different parties, sectors of society and armed factions, as well as women.
He said he hoped the need for inclusiveness was understood.
“If not, it will not only create nervousness inside of Syria, with the potential for new civil strife, even civil war, but it will also create negative reactions from neighboring countries,” Pedersen warned.
“There is so much at stake that it is extremely important that messages coming out from the armed group in Damascus... (are) reassuring to all communities in Syria and also to the international community.”
Pedersen also stressed that it was “important that no international actor is doing anything that could derail the very complicated transitional process.”
Since Assad’s ouster, Israel, which borders Syria, has sent troops into a buffer zone on the east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, in a move the UN has said violates the 1974 armistice.
“This is obviously a violation of the agreement from the 1974 and it’s also a violation, it goes without saying, of Syria sovereignty and territorial integrity and unity,” Pedersen said.
The Israeli military has also said it has conducted hundreds of strikes against Syrian military assets in the past two days, targeting everything from chemical weapons stores to air defenses to keep them out of militant hands.
Pedersen said he had spoken with Syrian ambassadors, whom the transitional authorities asked to remain in their posts, about Israel’s chemical weapons fears.
“They are emphasising very strongly that they are respecting the agreements that were put in place and they are not going to play with this,” he said.
New Syria PM says all religious groups’ rights ‘guaranteed’
- Millions of Syrians who fled the country urged to return home
- Rebels also pledge justice for victims of Bashar Assad’s regime
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new prime minister said the Islamist-led alliance that ousted president Bashar Assad will “guarantee” the rights of all religious groups and called on the millions who fled the war to return home.
Assad fled Syria after a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group and its allies, which brought to a spectacular end five decades of brutal rule by his clan.
Syrians across the country and around the world erupted in celebration, after enduring a stifling era during which anyone suspected of dissent could be thrown into jail or killed.
With Assad’s overthrow plunging Syria into the unknown, its new rulers have sought to assure members of the country’s religious minorities that they will not repress them.
They have also pledged justice for the victims of Assad’s iron-fisted rule, with HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani vowing on Wednesday that officials involved in torturing detainees will not be pardoned.
Half a million people have been detained since the start of the war, with about 100,000 dying either under torture or due to poor detention conditions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
“We will not pardon those involved in torturing detainees,” said Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa, urging “countries to hand over any of those criminals who may have fled so they can be brought to justice.”
In the corridors of Damascus’s main hospitals, thousands of families gathered to try to find the bodies of loved ones captured years ago by the authorities.
“Where are our children?” women cried out as they grasped at the walls, desperate for closure after their years-long ordeal.
Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and is proscribed as a terrorist organization by many Western governments, though it has sought to moderate its rhetoric.
“Precisely because we are Islamic, we will guarantee the rights of all people and all sects in Syria,” said Mohammad Al-Bashir, whom the rebels appointed as the transitional head of government.
Asked whether Syria’s new constitution would be Islamic, he told Italian daily Corriere della Sera that “we will clarify all these details during the constituent process.”
Bashir, whose appointment was announced Tuesday, is tasked with heading the multi-ethnic, multi-confessional country until March 1.
After decades of rule by the Assads, members of the minority Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam, Syrians now face the enormous challenge of charting a new course as they emerge from nearly 14 years of war.
Roaming the opulent Damascus home of Assad, Abu Omar felt a sense of giddy defiance being in the residence of the man he said had long oppressed him.
“I am taking pictures, because I am so happy to be here in the middle of his house,” said the 44-year-old.
“I came for revenge. They oppressed us in incredible ways.”
In the Assads’ heartland Qardaha, the tomb of the former leader’s father was set alight, AFP footage showed, with rebel fighters in fatigues and young men watching it burn.
The war has killed more than 500,000 people and forced half the population to flee their homes, with six million of them seeking refuge abroad.
In his interview with Corriere della Sera, which was published on Wednesday, Bashir called on Syrians abroad to return to their homeland.
“Mine is an appeal to all Syrians abroad: Syria is now a free country that has earned its pride and dignity. Come back,” he said.
He said Syria’s new rulers would be willing to work with anyone so long as they did not defend Assad.
Assad was propped up by Russia, where he reportedly fled, as well as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin said it wanted to see rapid stabilization in Syria, as it criticized Israel over hundreds of air strikes it conducted on its neighbor over the past two days.
“We would like to see the situation in the country stabilized somehow as soon as possible,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Russia was continuing to discuss the fate of its military infrastructure in the country with Syria’s new leadership, he added.
Iran said Assad’s overthrow was the “product of a joint US-Israeli plot.”
While Assad had faced down protests and an armed rebellion for more than a decade, it was a lightning offensive launched on November 27 that finally forced him out.
The rebels launched their offensive from northwest Syria on the same day that a ceasefire took effect in the Israel-Hezbollah war in neighboring Lebanon.
That war, which killed thousands in Lebanon, saw Israel inflict staggering losses in Hezbollah ranks.
Assad’s overthrow raises the question of whether Hezbollah will ever recover, given that it had long relied on Syria as a conduit for supplies from Iran.
Qatar and Turkiye, on the other hand, historically backed the opposition.
Qatar said Wednesday it would reopen its embassy in Damascus “soon,” while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected in Turkiye on Friday to discuss developments in Syria.
Robert Ford, the last US ambassador to Syria, helped spearhead the terrorist designation of HTS in 2012.
But he pointed with hope to post-victory statements by rebel chief Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, including welcoming international monitoring of any chemical weapons that are discovered.
“Can you imagine Osama bin Laden saying that?” said Ford, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“I’m not saying trust Jolani. He’s obviously authoritarian. He’s obviously an Islamist who doesn’t believe that Christians have an equal right to power as Muslims. But I sure as hell want to test him on some of these things,” he added.
Israel minister tells US ‘currently a chance’ for Gaza hostage deal
- “We are hoping for the release of all the hostages, including US citizens,” he said.
- The US, along with Egypt and Qatar, has been unsuccessfully attempting to mediate a ceasefire and hostage release
JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday that there was “currently a chance” for a deal to release the remaining hostages held in Gaza for more than 14 months.
“There is currently a chance for a new deal,” Katz told Austin in a phone call, according to a readout from his office.
“We are hoping for the release of all the hostages, including US citizens,” he said.
The US, along with Egypt and Qatar, has been unsuccessfully attempting to mediate a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas for more than a year.
Palestinian militants took 251 people hostage during Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7, 2023. A total of 96 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
In recent days, there have been signs that months of failed negotiations might be revived and a breakthrough achieved.
On Monday, a source close to Hamas told AFP that the group had told Egypt’s spy chief of “efforts to collect information about the living Israeli prisoners.”
The source said that Hamas had prepared a list of hostages who were still alive, including several prisoners with dual Israeli and US citizenship.
“If Israel agrees to the Egyptian proposal, I think the exchange deal will be ready for implementation,” the source said.
Another upbeat assessment came from Qatar, which said on Saturday the election of Donald Trump as the next US president had created new “momentum” for negotiations.
At the same time, a source close to the Hamas delegation said that Turkiye, as well as Egypt and Qatar, had been “making commendable efforts to stop the war,” and a new round of talks could begin soon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also hinted at potential progress, telling the families of hostages that Israel’s military successes against Hezbollah and Hamas would facilitate negotiations for their release.
Protesters, including relatives of the hostages, have repeatedly called for a deal to free the captives and accuse Netanyahu of prolonging the war for political purposes.
The unprecedented October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the UN considers reliable.
Seven individuals with US citizenship remain in Gaza, with four confirmed dead. Last week, the Israeli military notified the family of US-Israeli soldier Omer Neutra that he was killed on October 7 and his body held in Gaza.
Relatives of Syria’s disappeared seek closure in Damascus morgues
- No such closure was within reach for Yasmine Shabib, 37, who still could not locate her brother or father, both arrested in 2013
- Having failed to locate her son, a mother comes out, her hand bloodstained from the bodies she inspected
DAMASCUS: In the corridors of Damascus’s main hospitals, thousands of families have gathered for the foreboding mission of trying to find the bodies of loved ones captured years ago by the Syrian authorities.
“Where are our children?” women cried out as they grasped at the walls, desperate for closure after their years-long ordeal.
But no such closure was within reach for Yasmine Shabib, 37, who still could not locate her brother or father, both arrested in 2013.
Having traveled for more than four hours from the northwestern city of Idlib, the victorious militants’ wartime base, she had little hope of finding them alive.
But at very least, she hoped she would not leave without their bodies.
“Just open the prison vaults for us, we will search ourselves among the corpses,” she said in tears.
“They buried the people everywhere, not just in Saydnaya. There are Saydnayas everywhere under our feet in Syria,” she added, referring to Syria’s most notoriously brutal prison, dubbed a “slaughterhouse” by human rights groups.
Outside the hospital, voices echo.
“Does anyone recognize body number nine?” a doctor calls out to a group of families as a phone is passed around between them, the picture of a corpse lighting up the screen.
Every once in a while, someone recognizes a loved one, and the body is summarily brought out of the morgue to be taken to another mortuary freezer, where the family can finally confirm whether it is one of their own.
Having failed to locate her son, a mother comes out, her hand bloodstained from the bodies she inspected.
“Their blood is still fresh,” she said trying to catch her breath.
Pathologist Yasser Al-Qassem confirms: “We still don’t know the dates or causes of death for the bodies arriving from Harasta,” a suburb of Damascus where another morgue is located.
“But one thing is certain, these deaths are recent.”
As soon as he heard that Bashar Assad had fled, Nabil Hariri rushed to Damascus from his southern hometown Daraa to search for his brother.
Arrested in 2014 when he was just 13, Hariri had had no news of his brother since.
“When you’re drowning, you cling to anything,” Hariri, 39, told AFP.
“So we search everywhere.”
He was among the thousands of desperate relatives who gathered outside Saydnaya on Tuesday, hoping that his brother was among the thousands of prisoners freed after Assad’s fall.
“I didn’t find my brother there,” he said.
At dawn on Wednesday, there was a brief resurgence of hope when he heard that 35 bodies were arriving from Harasta. The hospital morgue there was used as a staging post for the bodies of prisoners who died of maltreatment, hunger or illness before they were buried in mass graves.
But that hope was swiftly dashed.
“In all the photos, the bodies were old,” he said. “My brother is young.”
Syria’s new militant authorities announced that they had found bodies in the Harasta morgue.
After opening the white body bags, militant official Mohammed Al-Hajj took video that he later showed to AFP.
The footage showed bodies bearing signs of torture — one without an eye, another without any teeth, a third covered in dried blood.
Another body bag simply contained bones, while yet another held the remains of a flayed corpse, its ribcage poking out from the flesh.
Harasta “is one of the main centers where bodies from Saydnaya or Tishrin,” another notorious prison, “were gathered before being buried in mass graves,” said Diab Seria, a member of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya Prison.
Khaled Hamza found no traces of his son at Harasta, Saydnaya or the Damascus hospital.
But he has no intention of giving up, having stumbled across documents at the prison containing information about the detainees, which he then gathered and handed over to the new police authorities.
“We are millions searching for our children,” the taxi driver said. “We ask just one thing: are they alive or dead?“
Dutchwoman gets 10 years for enslaving Yazidi
- The court in The Hague convicted the 33-year-old from Hengelo in eastern Netherlands
- Hasna A. made the Yazidi woman do household chores for her and look after her son, the court ruled
THE HAGUE: A Dutch court Wednesday sentenced a woman to 10 years prison for keeping a woman from the Yazidi minority as a slave after joining the Daesh group in Syria.
The court in The Hague convicted the 33-year-old from Hengelo in eastern Netherlands, identified as Hasna A, for “enslavement, membership of a terrorist organization, promoting terrorist crimes, and endangering her young son.”
She traveled to Syria in 2015 with her son, aged four at the time, the court said. She married an Daesh fighter and had children with him.
Between May to October 2015, she lived with another Daesh fighter, who kept a Yazidi woman as a slave.
Hasna A. made the Yazidi woman do household chores for her and look after her son, the court ruled.
In 2014, Daesh swept across swathes of Iraq, carrying out horrific violence against the Kurdish-speaking Yazidis, whose non-Muslim faith the extremists considered heretical.
The jihadists massacred thousands of men and abducted thousands of women and girls as sex slaves.
Hasna A enslaved the Yazidi woman knowing that her actions contributed to the “widespread and systematic attack on the Yazidi community,” the court said.
“The court holds this against the suspect very seriously. Crimes against humanity such as these are among the most serious international crimes there are,” judges said.
According to public broadcaster NOS, Hasna A was repatriated in November 2022 to the Netherlands from a Syrian prison camp with 11 other Dutch women and their 28 children.
The women were arrested upon arrival in the Netherlands.
