Emotional scenes as political prisoners released in Syria
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Families of Syrian prisoners have been streaming towards the prisons of the Assad regime, where tens of thousands were imprisoned and tortured for years. The doors have been prised upon - but there are fear many could be trapped in secret underground prisons. Our reporter is at the infamous Saydayna prison near Damascus, where crowds of relatives are looking for their loved ones.
Also in our programme: what could the future hold for Syria's government? The province of Idlib, which has been run by the country's main rebel group, might hold some clues; and we speak to the family of American journalist Austin Tice who was abducted in Syria twelve years ago.
(Photo: Syrians dig into the ground as they search for relatives they believe were held in secret cells at Sednaya prison, dubbed by Amnesty International as the 'Human Slaughterhouse'. Credit: Shutterstock / Mohammed Al Rifai)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in London. |
| 0:08.9 | I'm Tim Frags. It has been a head-spinning few days in Syria. After the astonishing collapse of the House of |
| 0:15.9 | Assad, there's an equally dizzying array of questions which Syrians, not to mention the rest of us, need to |
| 0:22.2 | confront, whether the country will submit to the chaos and instability that has subsumed |
| 0:27.2 | other Arab countries whose rulers were toppled, or whether the promise of a more open |
| 0:32.3 | democratic government will vanish in the grip of another authoritarian leader. |
| 0:36.8 | On that front, there appear at least to be some initially encouraging noises |
| 0:40.8 | from the main Islamist rebel group in Syria, Hyatt Takri al-Sham. |
| 0:45.0 | They say that they've granted an amnesty to all army conscripts |
| 0:48.5 | and that they've had a meeting with the outgoing Prime Minister |
| 0:51.1 | about a transfer of power to an interim figure, |
| 0:58.5 | Mohammed al-Bashir, while underlining they say the need to benefit from the experience of those who have been running the country. In the even shorter term, there's also the question |
| 1:03.6 | about the country's network of notorious prisons where tens of thousands of political detainees |
| 1:08.7 | disappeared under the dictatorship of the Assads. |
| 1:13.8 | Families have been streaming towards the jails in the hope of finding their relatives |
| 1:17.4 | now that the doors have been prized open. |
| 1:20.2 | The most feared prison of them all was Sidneya near Damascus. |
| 1:24.5 | Our first report today is from there with our correspondent in Syria, Barbara |
| 1:29.1 | Plet Usher. |
| 1:34.1 | I'm about 30 kilometres outside of Damascus by one of the main prison complexes. It's called |
| 1:39.9 | Saeed Naya. And I can see two prisons in the distance on a hill. The one to the right is the |
| 1:45.5 | main prison. There, HTS freed the inmates already. The one to the left is called the red prison. |
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