Trembling, unable to speak and suffering from severe memory loss, freed Syrian inmates’ torturous experiences in Assad regime jails have been laid bare in harrowing pictures and videos emerging from the country.
While the liberation of thousands of prisoners has resulted in joyous scenes, with families reuniting with loved ones they thought they would never see again, the impact of the brutality they endured will stay with many forever.
The psychological terror guards subjected prisoners to has left many with signs of PTSD, while ritual beatings, torture and starvation have resulted in deep physical scars.
Some of the inmates’ ordeals began long before Bashar Al-Assad came to power in 2000, with an unknown number locked up under the brutal regime of his father Hafez and kept behind bars for decades before being released in recent days.
Among them was Jordanian national Osama Bashir Al-Bataineh, who this week was released from Sednaya, a prison known as the ‘Human Slaughterhouse’, after 38 years in captivity.
The emaciated figure has become a shadow of his younger self, barely recognisable as the young man pictured in Jordanian media.
He was arrested in 1986 aged just 18, officials said, with his family reporting his disappearance at the time.
Osama’s father had desperately searched for any trace of his son for years, reportedly paying officials hefty bribes to help secure his son’s release, but to no avail.
Osama Bashir Al-Bataineh was released from Sednaya after 38 years in captivity
Pictures shared by Jordanian media purportedly show Osama Al-Bataineh as a young man
An aerial photo shows people gathering at the Sednaya prison in Damascus on December 9
Video shows Osama apparently unable to speak after he was freed, looking blankly at the people gathered around him
‘He was transferred from Damascus to the Jaber border crossing (with Jordan) where he was handed over to border guards,’ Jordan’s foreign minister said
After years of his family not knowing his whereabouts, Osama was located in Syria ‘unconscious and suffering from memory loss’ this week, Jordanian Foreign Ministry Soufian al-Kodat said.
Video shows Osama apparently unable to speak even as chatter goes on around him, looking blankly at the people who have helped to rescue him after years behind bars.
‘He was transferred from Damascus to the Jaber border crossing (with Jordan) where he was handed over to border guards,’ Kodat said.
The minister confirmed that Osama had then, at last, been reunited with his family on Tuesday morning.
The rebels who swept Assad from power on Sunday opened prisons across the country, releasing thousands of detainees.
Civil society groups had long accused Assad of presiding over a brutal regime of arbitrary arrests, torture and murder in prisons.
Many foreigners were being held, including Suheil Hamawi from Lebanon who returned to his country on Monday after being locked up for 33 years.
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan said Tuesday there were still 236 Jordanians detained in Syria.
In the same year as Osama was detained, Syrian soldiers arrested another 18-year-old, university student Ali Hassan al-Ali, who went on to be behind bars until this week.
Moammar Ali had the greatest surprise of his life as – after 39 years of searching – he found his older brother Ali, pictured right, outside of a prison – now aged 57
His family hadn’t seen or heard from him in nearly 40 years, but on Thursday his younger brother Moammar Ali said he had the greatest surprise of his life as he found a man he believed to be his brother.
Moammar’s phone exploded with texts and calls as people sent him a photo of a man in his late 50s standing outside the Hama central prison in north Syria.
His friends said the man looked like Ali, with Moammar saying he soon realised ‘this is my brother’.
A view of dead bodies, who were tortured to death, at Al-Mujtahid Hospital as teams carry out investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Syria on December 10, 2024
Speaking to The Guardian, Moammar said: ‘There was no place in Syria we didn’t visit. We went around the whole country asking what happened to him. One day they would admit they had him in prison, the next day they would deny it.’
The last information he received was that he was being held on charges of political agitation.
But he will now finally be reunited with his brother – who is now 57. ‘He has come out of prison as an old man,’ his brother said.
Many others have not made it out of Assad’s prisons. Amnesty International has documented thousands of killings at Sednaya prison, whose name has become synonymous with the worst atrocities of the regime.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated in 2022 that more than 100,000 people had died in the jails since the start of an uprising in 2011 that led to the civil war.
Disturbing footage and images published this week have shown horrified rescuers pulling out dozens upon dozens of body bags from the depths of Sednaya.
Amnesty International claims dozens of people were secretly executed every week in the jail, estimating that up to 13,000 Syrians were killed between 2011 and 2016.
The leader of Syria’s rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that played a leading role in the lightning offensive that ousted Assad has vowed to hunt down officials, security forces and army officers who ‘tortured’ the Syrian people.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights claims that since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, over 157,000 people remain under arrest or have been forcibly disappeared – including 5,274 children and 10,221 women. It also claims over 15,000 have died under torture in that time.
