The release of prisoners from conditions of “hunger, humiliation, extreme despair” is a welcome and hopeful sign for the new balance of power in Syria, says the writer, dissident and political prisoner in Syria from 1980 to 1996, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, but it remains to be seen if others who were disappeared during the Syrian civil war, including al-Haj Saleh’s wife Samira, will be recovered or their fates identified.

The Guardian reports:

The celebrations in Damascus were interrupted by a whisper.

On the outskirts of the city, a door had been found. Beyond it lay a vast underground complex, five stories deep, containing the last prisoners of the Assad regime, who were gasping for air.

Cars raced towards Sednaya prison, locally known as “the human slaughterhouse”, the most notorious torture complex of the Syrian government’s vast network of detention centres. The Guardian followed as traffic came to a standstill and rumours were passed between lowered windows: there were 1,500 prisoners trapped underground that needed rescuing; perhaps your loved ones are among them. Cars were ditched by the roadside and people began to walk.

A procession lit by thousands of phone torches streamed through the prison complex gates, which until rebels took control of the facility earlier on Sunday, had guaranteed entry but not exit. Families huddled around fires in the prison ground to keep warm, while keeping an eye on the prison doors to see if they could recognise any faces coming out.

Rebel fighters tried to stop people from entering the prison itself, firing rounds in the air – but the crowd surged forward undeterred.

Inside, people roved about the labyrinthine facility, moving from cell to cell, searching for any clue that could them tell them where their relatives and friends might be. They were racing to locate the hidden underground wing – which they called the “red wing” – amid fears prisoners were starving without food and asphyxiating from lack of air. [Continue reading…]

Inside Sednaya prison: