Hayat Al Turki, 27, stands among scattered belongings inside Sednaya prison, once infamous as a slaughterhouse under Syria's Bashar Al Assad regime, as she searches for her relatives on Wednesday. — Reuters
Upon hearing the shocking news that rebels had overthrown Syria's long-standing regime, Hayat al-Turki rushed to a prison notorious for its brutality, hoping her brother and five other relatives held there were still alive. After four days of searching the infamous Sednaya complex, she remains desperate for any information about their fate in a prison known for widespread torture and executions, according to human rights groups.
"I sleep here, of course. I haven't gone home at all," she said. She had hoped to find her brother, uncle, or cousin, but like the relatives of many other Syrians searching the prison, they seem to have vanished.
The 27-year-old discovered a document dated October 1, 2024, listing over 7,000 prisoners of various categories.
"Where are they? Shouldn't they be in this prison?" she asked, noting that only a smaller number had been released. Thousands of prisoners were freed from President Bashar al-Assad's brutal detention system after his overthrow on Sunday, following a swift rebel advance that ended his family's five-decade rule. Many detainees were reunited with tearful relatives who believed they had been executed years earlier.
In Sednaya, a hanging noose served as a grim reminder of the dark days their relatives endured. "I search the entire prison... I go into a cell for less than five minutes, and I suffocate," Turki said before entering another cell to sift through belongings. "Are these for my brother, for example? Do I smell him in them? Or these? Or is this his blanket?" she wondered, holding a photo of her sibling, missing for 14 years.
Rights groups have documented mass executions in Syria's prisons, and the United States reported in 2017 the discovery of a new crematorium at Sednaya for hanged prisoners. Torture was extensively documented.
The main rebel commander who toppled Assad declared on Wednesday that anyone involved in the torture or killing of detainees during his rule would be pursued, with no possibility of pardon. "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 on the Syrian state TV's Telegram channel.
This offered little solace to Turki, whose hopes of finding her brother were dwindling. "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?"
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