People gather to celebrate the opposition takeover of Damascus, following the Friday prayers, at Umayyad Square in Damascus, Syria. Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham leader Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani called on people across the country to celebrate ‘the victory of the revolution after the capture of Damascus and the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday. Photo by Mohammed al Rifai/EPA-EFE
The squares and streets of Damascus and other major cities were crowded Friday with cheering Syrians, who flocked in large numbers to celebrate the victory of their revolution that led to the ouster of President Bashar Assad after nearly 14 years of a bloody war.
Tens of thousands gathered at the Umayyad Mosque for the first Friday prayers since opposition forces, headed by the Islamist “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, captured Damascus last Sunday, forcing Assad to flee and seek refuge in Russia. Advertisement
It took the rebels 11 days to take control of most of the country after they launched large-scale, lightning attacks, seizing the main cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs.
Friday’s gatherings came in response to a call by the rebel leader Ahmad Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al Jolani, to celebrate “the victory of the blessed revolution” and express “their joy,” but without “firing bullets in the air and terrorizing people.” Advertisement
“Then, after that, let us move on to building the country,” Sharaa said in a videotaped speech during which he appeared for the first time in civilian clothes. “As we said from the beginning, we are victorious with God’s help.”
A huge crowd crammed the Umayyad mosque, where new caretaker Prime Minister Mohammad al Bashir headed the Friday prayers.
People in the streets were seen shouting for freedom and justice and dancing while waving the Syrian Revolution flag, now adopted as the country’s new official flag.
The same scene was repeated in almost every main city in the country, except the areas controlled by the Kurdish forces in northeastern Qamishli, Hasakah and Riqqa provinces.
In an interview with Al Jazeera TV station, Sharaa said the notorious Sednaya prison, in which thousands of detainees were held and tortured for many years, “symbolizes the brutality and cruelty of the Assad regime. “
“That is why we are collecting evidence from this place to try Assad,” he said, referring to ongoing efforts to identify those who tortured or executed the prisoners to prosecute them.
Sharaa said human rights organizations and independent civil society organizations will be invited to visit the Sednaya prison, on the outskirts of Damascus, so that “the whole world witnesses this horrific place and the injustice that took place there.” Advertisement
The fall of Assad revealed a shocking reality about tens of thousands of detainees when rebel forces stormed his regime-run jails in Damascus and other Syrian regions and freed them.
However, a great number of them, including missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice, remain unaccounted for.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement Friday that it has registered 35,000 cases of people who have gone missing in Syria in the past 13 years, over which time anti-Assad peaceful protests broke out and then turned into a bloody civil war.
Stephan Sakalian, head of the international committee delegation in Syria, said he and his team visited the Sednaya prison for the first time Tuesday, where families were anxiously waiting to know the fate of their loved ones who went missing for many years.
Inside the prison, Sakalian said they saw piles of damaged documents scattered throughout different rooms.
“These records may contain crucial information that could help families find long-awaited answers,” he said, urging all parties across Syria “to prevent the destruction of crucial records, like arrest logs, lists of detainees or deceased persons; and court and hospital records.”
The Red Cross, he said, was not given access to all places of detention in Syria under Assad’s 24-year rule. Advertisement
“The images we saw this week illustrate how vital this access is to prevent some of the worst human suffering in Syria or anywhere else in the world,” he added.
According to Fadel Abdel Ghany, the head of Syria’s Network for Human Rights, only 33,000 detainees have been found and freed from Syria’s prisons since Assad’s fall.
“We are talking about 80,000 to 85,000 Syrians in forced disappearance, killed under torture in Assad’s centers of detention,” Abdel Ghany said in an interview with Al Jazeera English TV.
He said that the vast majority who have been released “are arbitrary arrests, not forced disappearance.”
Al Jazeera said Abdel Ghany’s organization, which was founded in 2011 to monitor and document human rights violations in Syria, had compiled over the past 14 years a database of those killed and arrested. It also has government records that secretly registered the death of hundreds of prisoners whose families were not notified.
Abdel Ghany said only some 1,000 detainees had been released from the Sednaya prison, while its “capacity is about 11,000.”
The International Commission on Missing Persons indicated it has received reports concerning the location of 66 sites of mass graves.
U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen said Thursday that the images from Sednaya and other detention centers “starkly underscore the unimaginable barbarity” Syrians endured and reported for years. Advertisement
“The world owes it to the Syrian people to listen, to act and to work tirelessly toward a future where such horrors can never recur,” Pederson said.
