The torturous experiences of liberated Syrian prisoners in the Assad regime’s prisons include shaking, unable to speak and suffering from severe memory loss. They have been exposed in harrowing photos and videos emerging from the country.
Although the liberation of thousands of prisoners has resulted in joyful scenes, with families reunited with loved ones they thought they would never see again, the impact of the atrocities they endured will stay with many forever.
The psychological terror prisoners were subjected to left many with signs of PTSD, while ritual abuse, torture and starvation left deep physical scars.
Some of the prisoners’ ordeals began long before Bashar Al-Assad came to power in 2000. An unknown number were imprisoned under the brutal regime of his father Hafez and spent decades behind bars before being released in recent days.
Among them was Jordanian national Osama Bashir Al-Bataineh, who was released this week from Sednaya, a prison known as the “human slaughterhouse,” after 38 years of captivity.
The emaciated figure has become a shadow of his younger self, barely recognizable as the young man depicted in Jordanian media.
He was arrested in 1986 at just 18 years old, officials said, with his family reporting his disappearance at the time.
Osama’s father had searched desperately for years for any trace of his son, reportedly paying officials hefty bribes to secure his son’s release, but to no avail.
Osama Bashir Al-Bataineh was released from Sednaya after 38 years of captivity
Photos shared by Jordanian media show Osama Al-Bataineh as a young man
An aerial photo shows people gathering at Sednaya Prison in Damascus on December 9
Video shows Osama apparently unable to speak after he was released, as he looked blankly at those around him
“He was transferred from Damascus to the Jaber border crossing (with Jordan), where he was handed over to border guards,” the Jordanian foreign minister said.
After years of his family not knowing where he was, Osama this week found himself “unconscious and suffering from amnesia” in Syria, Jordanian Foreign Ministry Soufian al-Kodat said.
Video shows Osama apparently unable to speak even as the chatter continues around him, as he looks blankly at the people who helped save 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 finally been reunited with his family on Tuesday morning.
The rebels who ousted Assad from power on Sunday opened prisons across the country and released thousands of prisoners.
Civil society groups have long accused Assad of presiding over a brutal regime of arbitrary arrests, torture and murder in prisons.
Many foreigners were detained, including Suheil Hamawi of Lebanon, who returned to his country on Monday after 33 years of incarceration.
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan said on Tuesday that 236 Jordanians were still trapped in Syria.
The same year Osama was arrested, Syrian soldiers arrested another 18-year-old university student Ali Hassan al-Ali, who remained behind bars until this week.
Moammar Ali got the biggest surprise of his life when – after 39 years of searching – he found his older brother Ali, (pictured right), outside a prison – now 57 years old.
His family had not seen or heard from him for almost 40 years, but on Thursday his younger brother Moammar Ali said he had the biggest surprise of his life when he found a man he thought was his brother.
Moammar’s phone exploded with texts and calls when people sent him a photo of a man in his late 50s standing outside Hama’s central prison in northern Syria.
His friends said the man looked like Ali, while Moammar said he quickly realized ‘this is my brother’.
A view of dead bodies, tortured to death, at Al-Mujtahid Hospital as teams conduct investigations in secret compartments of Sednaya Prison after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Syria on December 10, 2024
Speak with The GuardianMoammar said: ‘There was no place in Syria that we did not visit. We went across the country to ask what happened to him. One day they would admit they had him in jail, 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 came out of prison an old man,” his brother said.
Many others have been unable to leave Assad’s prisons. Amnesty International has documented thousands of killings at Sednaya prison, whose name has become synonymous with the regime’s worst atrocities.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated in 2022 that more than 100,000 people had died in prisons since the start of a 2011 uprising that led to the civil war.
Disturbing images and footage published this week show shocked rescuers pulling dozens and dozens of body bags from the depths of Sednaya.
Amnesty International claims that dozens of people were secretly executed in the prison every week, and estimates that around 13,000 Syrians were killed between 2011 and 2016.
The leader of the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which played a leading role in the lightning offensive that ousted Assad, has vowed to hunt down officials, security forces and army officers who have “tortured” the Syrian people.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights claims that more than 157,000 people remain arrested or forcibly disappeared since the start of the Syrian revolution in March 2011 – including 5,274 children and 10,221 women. It is also claimed that more than 15,000 people died under torture during that time.