Other parts of Assad’s prison system were less harsh. Phone calls to the house were allowed and families were allowed to visit.
But Saydnaya was the dark and rotten heart of the regime. The fear of being sent there and killed without knowing what happened was central to the Assad regime’s system of coercion and repression.
The authorities did not have to notify the families who were imprisoned there. Allowing them to fear the worst was another way of applying pressure. The regime has a boot on Syrians’ throats because of the power, reach and savagery of its myriad and overlapping secret services, as well as the routine use of torture and executions.
I have been to other infamous prisons in the days since their release, including Abu Salim Prison, former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s infamous prison in Tripoli, and Puli Charki outside Kabul, Afghanistan.
None of them were as ugly and harmful as Saydnaya. In its overcrowded cells, men had to urinate into plastic bags because their access to toilets was limited.
When the locks were broken, they left behind their dirty rags and scraps of blankets, which they all kept to cover themselves when they slept on the floor. Torture and executions have already been recorded in Saydnaya.
Undoubtedly, in the coming months, more information will emerge from the mouths of former prisoners about the horrors that took place within its walls.
In the corridors of Saidnaya, you see how difficult it will be to fix the country that Assad broke to save his regime. Now that the prison has been hacked, like the country, it has become a microcosm of all the problems facing Syria since the Assad regime collapsed and was swept away.
