BEIRUT: Saydnaya prison north of the Syrian capital Damascus has become a notorious symbol of the inhumane abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011.
The prison complex was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomising the atrocities committed against his opponents by ousted president Bashar Assad.
When Syrian militants entered Damascus on Sunday after their lightning advance that toppled the Assad government, they announced they had seized Saydnaya and freed its inmates.
Some had been incarcerated there since the 19080s.
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), the militants liberated more than 4,000 people.
Photographs of haggard and emaciated inmates, some helped by colleagues because they were too weak to leave their cells, were circulated worldwide.
Suddenly the workings of this infamous jail that rights group Amnesty International had dubbed a “human abattoir” were revealed for all to see.
The prison was built in the 1980s during the rule of Hafez Assad, father of the deposed president, and was initially meant for political prisoners including members of Islamist groups and Kurdish militants.
But down the years, Saydnaya became a symbol of pitiless state control over the Syrian people.
In 2016, a United Nations commission found that “the Syrian Government has also committed the crimes against humanity of murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and other inhuman acts,” notably at Saydnaya.
The following year, Amnesty International in a report entitled “Human Slaughterhouse” documented thousands of executions there, calling it a policy of extermination.
Shortly afterwards, the United States revealed the existence inside Saydnaya of a crematorium in which the remains of thousands of murdered prisoners were burnt.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in 2022 reported that around 30,000 people had been imprisoned in Saydnaya where many were tortured, and that just 6,000 were released.
The ADMSP believes that more than 30,000 prisoners were executed or died under torture, or from the lack of medical care or food between 2011 and 2018.
The group says the former authorities in Syria had set up salt chambers — rooms lined with salt for use as makeshift morgues to make up for the lack of cold storage.
In 2022, the ADMSP published a report describing for the first time these makeshift morgues of salt.
It said the first such chamber dated back to 2013, one of the bloodiest years in the Syrian civil conflict.
Many inmates are officially considered to be missing, with their families never receiving death certificates unless they handed over exorbitant bribes.
After the fall of Damascus last week, thousands of relatives of the missing rushed to Saydnaya hoping they might find loved ones hidden away in underground cells.
Saydnaya is now empty, and Syria’s White Helmets emergency workers group announced the end of search operations there on Tuesday, with no more prisoners found.
Several foreigners also ended up in Syrian jails, including Jordanian Osama Bashir Hassan Al-Bataynah, who spent 38 years behind bars and was found “unconscious and suffering from memory loss,” the foreign ministry in Amman said on Tuesday.
According to the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan, 236 Jordanian citizens were held in Syrian prisons, most of them in Saydnaya.
Other freed foreigners included Suheil Hamawi from Lebanon who returned home on Monday after being locked up in Syria for 33 years, and also spent time inside Saydnaya.

BEIRUT: The Lebanese army command said its units were being deployed in the border village of Khiam on Friday after entering it on Thursday as a new UN report warned that Lebanon had “reached the brink of collapse” despite the signing of a ceasefire agreement last month to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia also urged a reassessment of priorities, emphasizing that care is a fundamental element in achieving social stability and economic recovery.

In a study titled “Restoring Care, Rebuilding Communities: Path to Recovery for Lebanon,” ESCWA highlighted that the effects of the conflict extended beyond immediate humanitarian needs, affecting health, education, and social infrastructure.

On Friday, Lebanese army units began clearing the main road from the north of the town to the south, connecting Khiam to Marjayoun, by removing rubble and potential explosives left by the Israelis.

The army command said the deployment of its military units was taking place in coordination with the five-member committee tasked with monitoring the ceasefire agreement.

Israel completed the withdrawal of its forces from Khiam on Thursday morning.

The Lebanese army command warned “citizens not to approach the area and abide by the instructions of the military units until the completion of the deployment.”

A Lebanese resident who was killed on Thursday when Israeli forces raided Khiam Square a few hours following the Lebanese army’s entry to the area has been identified as Mustafa Awada. Several people were injured in the Israeli assault.

Awada had just broadcast a live video from his phone when an Israeli attack drone killed him and injured many others who were with him in Khiam Square.

The Lebanese army retrieved Awada’s body and transported it to the Marjayoun Governmental Hospital on Friday.

The Israeli army continued its hostilities in the invaded southern area, raiding the coastal town of Naqoura on Friday morning.

An Israeli drone also raided the Tebna area near Baisariyeh.

The Israeli army renewed its warnings to residents of southern Lebanon, instructing them not to move south of an area that includes 50 villages, the houses and infrastructure of which have been almost destroyed.

Lebanon’s southern border with Israel extends 120 km from the west of Naqoura to the east of Shebaa, constituting an area of 30,575 hectares.

There are 30 towns and villages on the borderline, comprising an estimated 32,000 homes.

Some 170,000 people reside in these towns, including around 90,000 permanent residents, who are still displaced.

Official statistics indicate that 70 percent of people in the area Israeli forces invaded are Shiites, while the remaining residents include Sunni Muslims, Druze, and Christians.

Israeli troops are set to withdraw from the area within 60 days since the ceasefire agreement came into force.

Under the ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese army is supposed to deploy 6,000 soldiers south of the Litani River to work in coordination with UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL to extend state authority and withdraw unauthorized weapons from the area.

Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee claimed on Friday in a social media post that Brigade 769 forces discovered and destroyed “Kornet missiles and an anti-tank missile launcher” in southern Lebanon.

Adraee claimed that the forces discovered numerous combat tools, including rocket launchers and Kornet missiles camouflaged in rugged and mountainous areas, in addition to Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition magazines, and other military equipment.

They also found an anti-tank rocket launcher that Hezbollah operatives had used to fire at towns in the Galilee panhandle area over the past year, which was subsequently confiscated.

Adraee said Israeli forces also “discovered a weapons depot containing RPG shells and mortar rounds, all of which were confiscated.”

The troops were conducting field operations to “neutralize threats,” he added.

Also on Friday, explosions were heard in the mountain range and villages of Baalbek-Hermel, in eastern Lebanon.

It was confirmed that these explosions originated from firing ranges located east of Baalbek, where the Lebanese army was detonating missiles left over from the recent Israeli aggression.

The Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria continued to witness heavy traffic for the sixth consecutive day, with families fleeing Syrian territory following the fall of the Assad regime.

The Lebanese General Security prevents the entry of those who do not meet specific conditions while facilitating the passage of Syrian refugees in Lebanon returning to their homeland.

Several Lebanese truck owners, stranded in Daraa, Syria, appealed to Lebanese authorities to urgently intervene to facilitate the passage of their vehicles to Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing.

The truck owners said in their plea that their number is estimated at 70 trucks loaded with cheese and food products destined for Lebanese markets.

They said that delays in procedures and increasing restrictions at the border left the trucks stranded on Syrian land for several days.

The Lebanese army on Friday launched an investigation into a road accident involving 30 Syrian nationals who sustained injuries when the passenger bus they were traveling in overturned and collided with a curb in Akkar, in the far north of Lebanon.

It was revealed that those travelers had entered Lebanon clandestinely through an illegal border crossing along the Nahr Al-Kabir river between Syria and Lebanon.

The bus driver, a Lebanese national, was among 11 injured people who needed to be hospitalized. Some passengers were in critical condition.

In other developments, Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah’s head of liaison and coordination unit, has assured that the movement would support the Lebanese army’s mission as outlined in the ceasefire agreement to the greatest extent possible.

The assurance came at a recent meeting between Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun and Safa, the Central News Agency, known as Al-Markazia, reported on Friday.

The parliament speaker’s adviser, Ahmed Baalbaki, was also present.

Safa previously survived airstrikes targeting him in Beirut in October.