[Itse]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...assads-prisons

A reminder of why people are celebrating the end of Assads regime.

they also opened the doors of the regime’s notorious prisons, into which upwards of 100,000 people disappeared during nearly 14 years of civil war.

Many emerged frail and emaciated into the bright December sunlight, greeted by weeping family members who had no idea they were still alive. Some struggled to comprehend that Assad was gone; a few held even longer had never even been told that he had succeeded his father, Hafez, who died in 2000.

Verified videos from Damascus showed dozens of women and small children being held in cells, the rebels opening the doors telling them not to be afraid.

Raghad al-Tatary, a pilot who refused to bomb the city of Hama during the uprising against Hafez al-Assad in the 1980s, was freed after 43 years; Tal al-Mallouhi, 19 when she was arrested in 2009 for a blogpost criticising state corruption, was found alive.

One shaven-headed, shaking man in Sednaya had been so ill-treated he had lost his memory and struggled to talk. His family said he had been 20 and a medical student when he vanished 13 years ago.