The celebrations in Damascus were interrupted by a whisper.
On the outskirts of the city, a door had been found. Beyond it lay a vast underground complex, five storeys deep, containing the last prisoners of the Assad regime, who were gasping for air.
Cars raced towards Sednaya prison, locally known as “the human slaughterhouse”, the most notorious torture complex of the Syrian government’s vast network of detention centres.
The Guardian followed as traffic came to a standstill and rumours were passed between lowered windows: there were 1,500 prisoners trapped underground that needed rescuing; perhaps your loved ones are among them. Cars were ditched by the roadside and people began to walk.
A procession lit by thousands of phone torches streamed through the prison complex gates, which until rebels took control of the facility earlier on Sunday, had guaranteed entry but not exit. Families huddled around fires in the prison ground to keep warm, while keeping an eye on the prison doors to see if they could recognise any faces coming out.
Rebel fighters tried to stop people from entering the prison itself, firing rounds in the air – but the crowd surged forward undeterred.
Inside, people roved about the labyrinthine facility, moving from cell to cell, searching for any clue that could tell them where their relatives and friends might be. They were racing to locate the hidden underground wing – which they called the “red wing” – amid fears prisoners were starving without food and asphyxiating from lack of air.
“There are three in my family missing. They told us that there are four levels underground, and that people are choking inside – but we don’t know where it is,” said Ahmad al-Shnein as he searched the prison corridor.
“The ones that emerged from here looked like skeletons. So imagine how those underground will look,” Shnein said.
The prison was seemingly built to induce a sense of placeless-ness. At its centre is a spiral staircase that from the ground floor appears endless. The staircase is ringed by metal bars and, beyond them, large identical vault doors, through which lie the facility’s three wings. According to the rebel fighters, each wing specialised in a different form of torture. There are no windows to the outside world.
On Sunday, people milled around the metal staircase, entering and emerging from different doors, but always returning to the centre. Rebel fighters seemed no better informed. One had finally found a map, and crowds huddled around him as he pored over the half-a-metre wide paper document, its looping scrawl almost illegible.
The cramped cells were littered with blankets and clothes, cast off when prisoners were suddenly freed by rebels earlier in the day. Some had jagged holes in the walls, where additional prisoners had been crammed. Videos showed fighters freeing female prisoners on Sunday, who needed to be encouraged to leave, unable to believe they were truly getting out.
The narrow cells, no more than a few meters across, had been stuffed with more than a dozen people at a time, leaving no space to lie down, according to rights groups. The screams of prisoners being tortured could be heard echoing down the hallways.
According to Amnesty International, up to 20,000 prisoners were held at Sednaya, most of them imprisoned after secret sham trials that lasted no more than a few minutes. Survivors of the prison recounted brutal daily beatings and torture by prison guards that included rape, electric shocks and more. Many were tortured to death.
Survivors said guards enforced a rule of absolute silence within the prison. If the detainees could not speak, they could at least write. Cell walls were covered in scrawled, handwritten messages. Tab, khadni. Enough already, just take me, one message read.
Another piece of paper, found on the ground, torn and trodden, detailed the death of a prisoner, seemingly written by another detainee eager to document the death of his friend.
The note, written by a 63-year-old prisoner who signed it as Mohammed Abdulfatah al-Jassem, said that he saw another prisoner – whose name was not legible – fall and hit his head during a seizure. He left a phone number on the note for the person who found it to call. No one picked up when the Guardian rang.
In the chaos of the prison break, records were taken by families searching for relatives. Each ledger, filled with names and other details, were carried out of the prison where groups of people would gather and see if they knew anyone mentioned. Rights groups have cautioned that records need to be preserved in an orderly fashion, so that the fate of about 136,000 people arrested by the Assad regime can be documented.
Yells began to emerge from somewhere within the prison and people began to run. Someone had broken open a door, and said that he had heard a voice from below. Fighters yelled for calm as hundreds clamoured to see who might be below. They set to work, the clang of a shovel against a padlock reverberating through the metal fortress.
Syrian civil defence on Monday released a statement saying that despite an intensive search through the facility, they had not found any prisoners trapped underground. They cautioned people not to get their hopes up as rumours and misinformation circulated.
For many, Sednaya was their last hope of finding missing loved ones. Yamen al-Alaay, an 18-year old from the countryside of Damascus who was leaving Sednaya, said he had been going from prison to prison looking for his uncle who had disappeared in 2017.
“We arrived today and we searched and we searched, but we didn’t find anything. Those in the red wing have still not been found,” Alaay said, vowing to come back in the morning.
As people left Sednaya in the late hours of the night, thousands more were still coming from Damascus. One man coming in asked another departing, “Did you find anyone? Did anyone new emerge?” The man replied in a low voice, “No, but hopefully tomorrow.”
