As Syrians celebrated the downfall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, many embarked on a desperate quest to find missing family members who had been forcibly disappeared under his brutal rule. The focus turned to the infamous Saydnaya prison, a symbol of arbitrary detention, torture, and death. Crowds gathered outside the facility, located north of Damascus, with traffic jams stretching for miles as people walked uphill past barbed wire fences and watchtowers.
Just as Assad's opulent palaces showcased the family's lavish lifestyle, his prisons revealed the atrocities endured by Syrians for decades. Dating back to the 1970s, the regime's detention centers served as black holes where perceived opponents vanished. Saydnaya, dubbed 'the slaughterhouse,' witnessed the hanging of up to 13,000 individuals between 2011 and 2015.
