Thousands scour Syria’s most horrific prison but find no sign of their loved ones

DAMASCUS, Syria (news agencies) — They came from all over Syria, tens of thousands. The first place they rushed to after the fall of their longtime tormentor, former President Bashar Assad, was here: Saydnaya Prison, a place so notorious for its horrors it was long known as “the slaughterhouse.”

For the past two days, all have been looking for signs of loved ones who disappeared years or even decades ago into the secretive, sprawling prison just outside Damascus.

But hope gave way to despair Monday. People opened the heavy iron doors lining the hallways to find cells inside empty. With sledgehammers, shovels and drills, men pounded holes in floors and walls, looking for what they believed were secret dungeons, or chasing sounds they thought they heard from underground. They found nothing.

Insurgents freed dozens of people from the Saydnaya military prison on Sunday when Damascus fell. Since then, almost no one has been found.

“Where is everyone? Where are everyone’s children? Where are they?” said Ghada Assad, breaking down in tears.

She had rushed from her Damascus home to the prison on the capital’s outskirts, hoping to find her brother. He was detained in 2011, the year that protests first erupted against the former president’s rule – before they turned into a long, grueling civil war. She didn’t know why he was arrested.

“My heart has been burned over my brother. For 13 years, I kept looking for him,” she said. When insurgents last week seized Aleppo — her original hometown — at the start of their swiftly victorious offensive, “I prayed that they would reach Damascus just so they can open up this prison,” she said.

Civil defense officials helping in the search were as confused as the families over why no further inmates were being found. It appeared fewer were held here in recent weeks, they said.

But few were giving up, a sign of how powerfully Saydnaya looms in the minds of Syrians as the heart of Assad’s brutal police state. The sense of loss over the missing — and the sudden hope they might be found — brought a kind of dark unity among Syrians from across the country.

During Assad’s rule and particularly after the 2011 protests began, any hint of dissent could land someone in Saydnaya. Few ever emerged.