in Syria, prisoners from Saydnaya recount their ordeal

The transition continues in Syria. After the dictator's flight, the rebels announced on Tuesday December 10, the appointment of a Prime Minister. Mohammed al-Bashir promised calm and stability to the population.

With the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, life is slowly returning to normal, but the priority for many Syrians remains finding missing loved ones, victims of the despot's bloody repression. At the Hôpital Ibn al-Nafis hospital north of Damascus, Franceinfo met Khaled, a prisoner from Saydnaya, 48 hours after his release.

Lying on a stretcher, Khaled suffers martyrdom. Swollen face, swollen eye, open arch, this Syrian army conscript had deserted before being found by the henchmen of the al-Assad regime. “It happened at 5 a.m., I was going to get my car. What was done to me, how I got there ? I don't remember”blurted out the man who could barely move.

He has spinal fractures, a skull fracture. We want to take x-rays on him, explains the doctor who took care of him, before Khaled is questioned by those looking for relatives, giving names and showing photos. “I'm hurt, I'm not okay. Please stop ! I don't remember anything.”insists the former prisoner, while outside the hospital, a cousin has come from Aleppo to take care of him. “They took him out of Saydnaya, but I didn't find my two brothers aged 14 and 17 years that disappeared ten years ago”, she explains.

A little further on, a man who spent time in the same prison for a minor offense summarizes: “You come in blindfolded, you leave blindfolded… Inside, it's worse than anything you can imagine. Whipping, electrocution. You could end up impaled with this criminal regime.”

From now on, it is the rebels who control the country. And it is a faction from the city of Hama which monitors the hospital. “Some prisoners arrive having completely lost their memory, explains their leader. Others died. If we have space, we keep them so people can come and identify them.”