Idlib, Syria – “My identify was quantity 1100,” Hala stated, nonetheless frightened of being recognized by her actual identify.
Hala is without doubt one of the 1000’s who’ve been free of the prisons of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, after it spectacularly collapsed amid a insurgent offensive in lower than two weeks.
She instructed Al Jazeera that she had been taken from a checkpoint in Hama in 2019, accused of “terrorism” – a cost usually thrown at anybody suspected of opposing the federal government. She was taken to Aleppo, the place she has spent the time since in numerous prisons.
That’s till Syrian opposition forces arrived at Aleppo’s Central Jail on November 29, liberating her and numerous others.
“We couldn’t imagine it was actual and we might see the sunshine,” she stated of the opening of the jail by insurgent forces led by Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) in late November.
“The enjoyment was immense; we ululated and cheered, wishing we may hug and kiss them,” Hala stated of her liberators. “The enjoyment was even larger after I reached my household. It was as if I used to be born once more.”
The jail at Aleppo was amongst a variety of amenities opened up by HTS, whose lightning advance from Aleppo to Damascus has surprised many around the globe and ousted al-Assad.
Hala was simply one of many greater than 136,614 folks, who, in line with the Syrian Community for Human Rights, have been incarcerated inside Syria’s brutal jail community earlier than the insurgent advance.
Syria’s prisons have been a key pillar in supporting the al-Assad regime. Footage, smuggled out of Syria in 2013, confirmed what Human Rights Watch stated was “irrefutable proof of widespread torture, hunger, beatings, and illness in Syrian authorities detention amenities”, in what amounted to against the law in opposition to humanity, the rights group stated.
Hala recalled the arrest and torture of one other woman, a 16-year-old who she says subsequently died. The woman’s arrest got here simply two months after her marriage, Hala stated, when she was seized by police together with a college scholar, an aged girl, and two docs who the police accused of getting handled revolutionaries.
Reminiscences ‘can’t be erased’
“It was just like the day of my delivery, as if it have been the primary day of my life,” 49-year-old Safi al-Yassin stated of his launch from jail in Aleppo.
“The happiness is indescribable,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Al-Yassin described listening with others to the sound of the combating drawing near the jail earlier than November 29, earlier than “calm prevailed, and we heard the sounds of chants”, he stated of listening to the victorious rebels.
“There have been about 5,000 prisoners,” he recalled. “We began breaking the home windows and smashing the doorways to get out. Even the officers and guards wore civilian garments and went out with us, benefiting from our exit from the jail in order to not be caught by the rebels.”
Al-Yassin was a blacksmith who made fishing boats in Baniyas, a coastal metropolis in Syria’s northwest, earlier than his detention.
Previous to his launch, he says he was nearly midway by means of a 31-year sentence for having taken half in one of many demonstrations sweeping the nation at the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011.
Over the subsequent 14 years, he stated, he was subjected to “extreme bodily and years of psychological torture” at numerous places inside Syria’s intensive jail system.
Moved round between amenities, every shelling out its personal brutal model of interrogation, al-Yassin spent a 12 months within the notorious prison at Saydnaya, a facility characterised by Amnesty Worldwide in 2017 as a “human slaughterhouse”, earlier than being moved to Sweida and finally Aleppo.
Al-Yassin stated his therapy in Saydnaya was “indescribable and unwritable”.
“The scenes I noticed can’t be erased from my reminiscence even till demise,” he stated, recalling the psychological picture of “an aged man lined in blood, who later handed away”.
‘Approaching demise’
Maher – who additionally didn’t need to give his full identify – was amongst these freed.
Arrested for “funding terrorism” in 2017, he had spent the final seven years detained with out trial inside Syria’s jail system. He thought he had been “forgotten” by the authorities “as if I weren’t human as a result of I used to be only a quantity”.
He described the horror of what he skilled and noticed in jail.
“Each minute felt like approaching demise as a result of severity of the torture and its brutal strategies, which even an animal couldn’t face up to,” he stated.
However maybe his most surprising second was when he encountered a relative within the infamous Mezzeh Jail in Damascus.
“A bus arrived and introduced prisoners who have been transferred to my cell,” Maher stated. “Amongst them was a detainee who resembled my brother-in-law. I hesitated at first and thought to myself, ‘This will’t be Ayman, it might’t be him – his legs weren’t amputated?’”
Maher described approaching the prisoner to substantiate the worst of his suspicions, solely to find that the amputee had “misplaced his thoughts”.
Ultimately, it was solely by means of a tattoo that Maher realised this was the person he had recognized from life outdoors the jail.
Mezzeh was simply one of many amenities the place Maher was held. After years of torture, he stated that he by no means anticipated to depart Aleppo jail.
However then, the sudden occurred.
“[As] the sound of gunfire drew near the jail, all of us began chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is great], and we may by no means imagine that this dream had change into a actuality,” he stated. “We left the jail after breaking the doorways, embraced the revolutionaries, prostrated to God in gratitude, and we have been saved secure till I reached the home of my sister, who lives in Idlib together with her household.”
