Families search Syria’s Sednaya Prison for loved ones after al-Assad’s fall
Al Jazeera
Rescue teams scour the notorious prison near Damascus for detainees and hidden underground cells.
Rescue teams and relatives of disappeared people in Syria are searching for their loved ones at the notorious Sednaya Prison in Damascus after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
An intense search was under way at the jail on Monday for “hidden underground cells, reportedly holding detainees”, said the White Helmets rescue group, which dispatched emergency teams to the facility.
Al-Assad’s police state was known for generations as one of the harshest in the Middle East, holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.
Bewildered and elated prisoners poured out of Syrian jails on Sunday as al-Assad’s government collapsed. They shouted with joy as they emerged from one of the world’s most notorious detention systems.
Throughout Syria’s war, which began in 2011, security forces held hundreds of thousands of people in detention camps where international human rights organisations said abuses were rampant. Families were often told nothing of the fate of their loved ones.
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