As prisoners were set free from their subterranean jail cells around Damascus, shocked crowds roamed the ousted former president Bashar al-Assad’s mansions to grab what they could carry – and marvel at the trappings of his wealth.
Pictures from the presidential palace showed a man carrying a beige plush chair over his shoulder as people roamed the tiled floors beneath intricate carved wooden ceilings. In another image, a smashed chandelier lay in a courtyard beneath an ornate sloping staircase, a crumpled Syrian flag bunched among the broken glass. More images showed wooden furniture and fittings that had been carried into the garden outside as people attempted to haul them away.
