Idlib, Syria – “My name was number 1100,” Hala mentioned, nonetheless petrified of being recognized by means of her actual identify.
Hala is likely one of the 1000’s who’ve been free of the prisons of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, next it spectacularly collapsed amid a revolt offensive in lower than two weeks.
She informed Al Jazeera that she have been taken from a checkpoint in Hama in 2019, accused of “terrorism” – a fee frequently thrown at any person suspected of opposing the federal government. She was once taken to Aleppo, the place she has spent the occasion since in diverse prisons.
This is till Syrian opposition forces arrived at Aleppo’s Central Jail on November 29, releasing her and numerous others.
“We couldn’t believe it was real and we would see the light,” she mentioned of the outlet of the jail by means of revolt forces led by means of Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) in overdue November.
“The joy was immense; we ululated and cheered, wishing we could hug and kiss them,” Hala mentioned of her liberators. “The joy was even greater when I reached my family. It was as if I was born again.”
The jail at Aleppo was once amongst numerous amenities spread out by means of HTS, whose lightning journey from Aleppo to Damascus has shocked many all over the world and ousted al-Assad.
Hala was once simply one of the vital greater than 136,614 society, who, consistent with the Syrian Community for Human Rights, had been incarcerated inside of Syria’s brutal jail community sooner than the revolt journey.
Syria’s prisons had been a key pillar in supporting the al-Assad regime. Footage, smuggled out of Syria in 2013, confirmed what Human Rights Oversee mentioned was once “irrefutable evidence of widespread torture, starvation, beatings, and disease in Syrian government detention facilities”, in what amounted to a criminal offense towards humanity, the rights workforce mentioned.
Hala recalled the arrest and torture of every other woman, a 16-year-old who she says due to this fact died. The lady’s arrest got here simply two months next her marriage, Hala mentioned, when she was once seized by means of police together with a school scholar, an aged lady, and two docs who the police accused of getting handled revolutionaries.
Recollections ‘can’t be erased’
“It was like the day of my birth, as if it were the first day of my life,” 49-year-old Safi al-Yassin mentioned of his reduce from jail in Aleppo.
“The happiness is indescribable,” he informed Al Jazeera.
Al-Yassin described listening with others to the pitch of the combating drawing akin to the jail sooner than November 29, sooner than “calm prevailed, and we heard the sounds of chants”, he mentioned of listening to the victorious rebels.
“There were about 5,000 prisoners,” he recalled. “We started breaking the windows and smashing the doors to get out. Even the officers and guards wore civilian clothes and went out with us, taking advantage of our exit from the prison so as not to be caught by the rebels.”
Al-Yassin was once a blacksmith who made fishing boats in Baniyas, a coastal town in Syria’s northwest, sooner than his detention.
Previous to his reduce, he says he was once virtually midway via a 31-year sentence for having taken phase in one of the vital demonstrations sweeping the rustic at the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011.
Over the after 14 years, he mentioned, he was once subjected to “severe physical and years of psychological torture” at diverse places inside of Syria’s in depth jail device.
Moved round between amenities, every dishing out its personal brutal logo of interrogation, al-Yassin spent a 12 months within the infamous jail at Saydnaya, a facility characterized by means of Amnesty World in 2017 as a “human slaughterhouse”, sooner than being moved to Sweida and sooner or later Aleppo.
Al-Yassin mentioned his remedy in Saydnaya was once “indescribable and unwritable”.
“The scenes I saw cannot be erased from my memory even until death,” he mentioned, recalling the psychological symbol of “an elderly man covered in blood, who later passed away”.
‘Approaching death’
Maher – who additionally didn’t need to give his complete identify – was once amongst the ones freed.
Arrested for “funding terrorism” in 2017, he had spent the utmost seven years detained with out trial inside of Syria’s jail device. He idea he have been “forgotten” by means of the government “as if I were not human because I was just a number”.
He described the horror of what he skilled and noticed in jail.
“Every minute felt like approaching death due to the severity of the torture and its brutal methods, which even an animal could not withstand,” he mentioned.
However in all probability his maximum surprising occasion was once when he encountered a relative within the infamous Mezzeh Jail in Damascus.
“A bus arrived and brought prisoners who were transferred to my cell,” Maher mentioned. “Among them was a detainee who resembled my brother-in-law. I hesitated at first and thought to myself, ‘This can’t be Ayman, it can’t be him – his legs weren’t amputated?’”
Maher described coming near the prisoner to verify the worst of his suspicions, best to find that the amputee had “lost his mind”.
In spite of everything, it was once best via a tattoo that Maher realised this was once the person he had recognized from hour outdoor the jail.
Mezzeh was once simply one of the vital amenities the place Maher was once held. Upcoming years of torture, he mentioned that he by no means anticipated to shed Aleppo jail.
However next, the sudden took place.
“[As] the sound of gunfire drew close to the prison, we all started chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is great], and we could never believe that this dream had become a reality,” he mentioned. “We left the prison after breaking the doors, embraced the revolutionaries, prostrated to God in gratitude, and we were kept safe until I reached the house of my sister, who lives in Idlib with her family.”