Prisoners stagger free from Syria’s ‘slaughterhouse’ jail

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria´s most brutal jail were over.

“What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out! It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him!”

The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital Damascus, having sent president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war.

In the video, dozens of gaunt men emerged, some too weak to walk and carried by their companions. No furniture was visible in their cell except a few thin covers on the floor. Doors were rusted and walls stained with damp and dirt.

In another wing of the complex, women´s cells were opened. Before the door of one of them a lost child was waiting. Several of the women cried out: “I am scared.” They were visibly terrified of being mistreated by the armed men streaming through the prison.

“He is fallen,” the men called. “You can come out.” Freeing all of the prisoners from Saydnaya is harder than it looks, however. The prison is thought to descend several levels underground. Untold numbers of prisoners may still be locked inside them.

“There are hundreds, maybe thousands of prisoners held two or three floors underground, behind electronic locks and hermetically-sealed doors,” says Charles Lister, a fellow at the Middle East Institute research group.

The White Helmets, a Syrian rescue group, says it is searching for “hidden underground cells”. Since Sunday, their members have been bashing down walls with sledgehammers and iron bars, and using audio sensors and sniffer dogs.

“We are working as hard as we can, but so far there is no sign of prisoners in the basements and labyrinths,” the group´s leader Raed Saleh said in a message on X. He had earlier said he was “preparing for the worst”.