A Syrian woman whose grandfather, father and two brothers were detained by the military nearly 12 years ago says her loved ones remain missing even as the country’s most notorious prison has been emptied. He told the BBC that it was “devastating”.
“Now, miles away from the most brutal prison, we are huddled around a screen, our hearts hanging between hope and despair,” said Hiba Abdulhakim Kasawad from Homs. (24) told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We scan every face in the footage, looking for traces of our loved ones. This is the only thing we can do.”
On Sunday, families rushed to Saidnaya prison on the outskirts of Damascus as rebels invaded the capital and declared the end of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Political opponents were reportedly detained, tortured, and executed there.
But now that rescue workers have finished searching for detainees inside the prison, some families are facing new hardships.
“Right now, freedom is ringing like a bell, too loud for ears accustomed to silence,” Casawad said.
“Right now, our hearts are beating and we feel anticipation, joy and pain as we wait for the moment when we can finally be released and hold them, but we don’t know if we will ever see them again. Hmm, because right now we’re caught in the middle.”Either we find the answer, or we don’t know it at all. ”
Kasawad was 12 years old when he saw soldiers drag his male family members out of their home in the middle of the night on January 28, 2013. They were among 48 family members captured in the attack.
She said her other brother had already been killed in a fight with Assad’s forces in 2012 during the civil war that erupted after the 2011 Arab Spring protests.
“Words cannot describe the overwhelming pain that hit us at that time,” she said.
She has not seen the men’s families since then, but she said released prisoners heard their names from inside Saidnaya.
His grandfather, who was born in 1939, is now elderly, his father was born in 1962, and his brothers were born in 1989 and 1994.
Kasawad said her family was feeling “a mixture of laughter and tears” after the fall of Assad’s regime and the release of the prisoners.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen next. All we can do is keep looking,” she said. “I hope that this spark of happiness will come back into our lives, because it disappeared with the day they took it away.”
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