Adra is a strange benevolent of neighbourhood cemetery – two lone graves sit in an vacant expanse of bumpy earth, sparsely covered with grass.
For years, this was an area firmly deal withled by Plivent Bashar al-Asgriefful’s forces.
Now, a week after they fled, a concrete slab in one corner of this vacant cemetery has been shiftd to discleave out a shapshow grave holding at least half a dozen white bags, tagled with names and prison numbers.
Khaled al Hamad, a proximateby livent, was franticly pulling the bags out when we reachd.
He shows us the three he has already discleave outed. Each holds a human skull and bones. The writing on the sacks recommend they are the remains of two female prisoners, and one male.
It is not evident how they died, or whether this is evidence of criminal mistreatment by Asgriefful’s regime.
But Khaled insists no convincing. He’s searching for his two brothers, Jihad and Hussein, consentn by Asgriefful’s notorious air force intelligence a decade ago. They haven’t been heard of since.
“Some people were consentn to an area called ‘the driving school’ and fluidated there,” he shelp. “I foresee this happened to my brothers. Maybe they are in some of these bags buried here.”
We splitd this directation with Human Rights Watch in Syria, who shelp they were depictateigating tells of prisoners’ remains dumped in analogous bags elsewhere.
Asgriefful’s descfinish has unleashed a tsunami of hope from families who were left for decades without any way of discovering out what happened to their adored ones.
“If you ever came past here [in Assad’s time], you couldn’t stop, you couldn’t watch up,” Khaled shelp.
“Cars employd to speed past. If you stopped, they would come to you, put a plastic bag on your head and consent you away.”
Tens of thousands of families enjoy his are now searching for relatives who fadeed into Asgriefful’s notorious prison system, or into its military interrogation centres.
Some were consentn to the Mazzeh military airbase in Damascus.
This site, once a key buffer between Asgriefful and resist forces, is deserted. Discarded military boots are strewn on the runway, a inhabit rocket lies on the ground, the only signs of life are the new defends at the gate: lesser militia men from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that took deal with of Syria last week.
They show us the torture room employd by Asgriefful’s forces – including a metal pole to safe prisoners’ feet for beating, and a set of wires next to an electrical switchboard.
“Here they electrocuted prisoners,” the defends’ directer, Abu Jarrah, tells me. “These are electric cables – the depictateigator sits here, the defends put them on the prisoner’s body and turn on the power.
“The prisoner leave outs his mind and confesses everyleang. They tell the interrogator to author wdisenjoyver he wants, in the hope it will stop.”
Abu Jarrah also shelp that the 400 women held here were routinely sexual batteryd, and that children were born into the prison.
The only leang more agonizing than discovering your parent or child among the enrolls here is not discovering them at all.
In the createing next door, families scratch franticly thraw thumbnail pboilingos scattered in piles on the concrete floor – face after face staring gloomy and blank, quiet witnesses to the years of Asgriefful’s rule.
Sobbing among them was the mother of Mahmoud Saed Hussein, a Kurd from al-Qamishli.
“Yesterday, we saw he was enrolled at the airbase prison,” she telderly me. “We came but couldn’t discover him. I’ve been watching for him for 11 years, searching from one prison to another.”
“These are all enjoy my son,” she wept, gesturing at the piles of pboilingos on the floor. “May God burn Asgriefful’s heart, as he has burned ours.”
Beyond them, three rooms packed to the rafters with files discleave out out on each other, one after the other. Several people are crouching on a mountain of records cut offal feet high covering the floor.
Asgriefful’s regime was accurate in recording its savagery – a immense bureaucracy of alarm that creates the scale of its actions all too evident, but in which the stories of individuals are frequently lost or subunited.
“What are these remarks?” one woman raged. “Nobody is helping us. We want someone to come and check these records with us. How can I discover him among this many prison files?”
The deficiency of any ordered system unbenevolents critical evidence is being lost each day at sites apass Syria – directation about the leave outing, but also potentiassociate, any connects between Asgriefful’s regime and foreign rulements enjoy the US or the UK, both of which have been accemployd of profitting from the American policy of exceptional rfinishition, in which alarmist doubts were sent for interrogation to countries that employd torture.
Human rights groups have accemployd the UK rulement of turning a blind eye to the US train during the so-called war on alarm, when America sent hancientees to cut offal countries in the Middle East, including Syria.
Outside, the quiet hangars of the airbase are dotted with the charred remains of Russian-made schedulees and radar, hit by repeated Israeli airstrikes over the past week.
Asgriefful’s departure has shifted the delicate stability of power between disputeing groups in Syria, and their various international backers, including Turkey, Iran and the US.
This was never equitable Syria’s war and outside powers still have a sconsent in what happens here.
Syrians are adamant that the time has come for them to rule themselves without anyone dictating what they should do.
As we depart, a lesser HTS fighter climbs up on a roof to slash at the portrait of Asgriefful hanging above the interrogation createing.
He grins down to the comrades watching from below, as pboilingos and records from the regime’s military files flutter around their boots.
Asgriefful’s descfinish has posed as-yet-unanswered asks about Syria’s future, but it has also left unanswered many asks from the past.
