Her brother was pulled from his automobile at a army checkpoint almost a decade in the past, her brother-in-law dragged from his home by the police. Two of her cousins had been arrested close to the airport within the Syrian capital, Damascus. She mentioned she by no means had heard from any of them once more.
So after the autumn of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, Ghusun Juma, 35, started a quest for solutions that led her to an underground jail in considered one of Syria’s most infamous detention facilities, a colorless assortment of buildings in southeastern Damascus.
“I’m trying to see if there may be something that belonged to my brother, his ID card, or one thing together with his identify on it,” she mentioned, guiding herself by way of a darkish, dank cell block with a cellphone flashlight. “I’ve been wanting for the reason that first day, however I haven’t discovered something wherever.”
Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, and his troops’ abandonment of their bases as rebels stormed by way of Damascus, has uncovered the black packing containers of one of many Arab world’s most repressive regimes. While some Syrians have wandered by way of his luxurious palace, many extra have combed by way of the huge community of detention facilities whose repression helped preserve him in energy.
An untold variety of Syrians disappeared into the maw of that safety equipment over the a long time. As the rebels broke into prisons and freed prisoners over the previous few weeks, many Syrians hoped that their lacking kin would quickly return house.
