Horrors of Assad’s Torture System Exposed

With the fall of President Assad, the gates of prisons and torture chambers have opened. Saydnaya Prison in particular, where tens of thousands of people have disappeared or been tortured and murdered, has exposed the full cruelty of the regime.

A perfidious regime

Belgium’s Le Soir takes a look into hell:

The first images from inside the prison show cells in an atrocious state: walls covered in filth, windowless rooms in which dozens of prisoners appear to be crowded together without a single mattress. ... Executions took place there by the dozen, with prisoners being hanged next to each other. ... Over the years, some prisoners have testified to the existence of 'salt chambers' in Saydnaya Prison. The guards kept the bodies there before loading them onto trucks to take them to the mass graves. Sometimes, however, the torturers also brought prisoners there, who found themselves almost up to their knees in salt and surrounded by corpses. Today, as the gates of hell open, many fear to learn the true extent of the torture carried out by the Assad regime.

Everyday images alongside horrors

The Netherlands’ De Volkskrant columnist Frank Heinen reflects on the banality of evil in what the photos show and what they don't show:

Assad lying on a sofa. Assad in the kitchen in white underpants. Assad on a bicycle. Everyday life, nothing special. No trace of the horrific place that Syria was under Assad's leadership. ... When it comes to photos it's all about context. A photo from Saydnaya Prison, the human slaughterhouse where tens of thousands of people were detained and tortured, shows pieces of rope on the floor, a dirty floor. ... It's only in connection with the accounts of barbaric torture methods that the pieces of rope become a noose.

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Dictator's fall could bolster society

The social catharsis offers opportunities, writes foreign policy expert Botond Feledy in Slovakia’s Új Szó:

If the new government doesn't gain international legitimacy quickly, the country could easily fall back into a new civil war. ... At the same time, it is a rare moment in history when a people can walk freely around the prisons, morgues and torture chambers of a recently overthrown dictator. Here in Europe, we can hardly imagine this profound level of liberation. ... There could be a lot of societal energy for a gentle leadership to channel. World history doesn't give us much reason for optimism, but we'll see if Syria can remain intact, and if so, in whose hands.

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