Relatives of missing Syrians ‘suspended between hope and despair’

Thousands of people are believed to have been detained and tortured at Syria’s notorious Saydnaya Prison under the Assad regime

Getty Images People gathering outside Saydnaya Prison, which is a big white building. — Thousands of people are believed to have been detained and tortured at Syria’s notorious Saydnaya Prison under the Assad regime

A Syrian woman whose grandfather, father and two brothers were detained by the military nearly 12 years ago has told the BBC it is “devastating” that her loved ones remain missing, despite the country’s most notorious prison being emptied.

“Now, miles away from that most brutal prison, we are huddling around screens, our hearts suspended between hope and despair,” Hiba Abdulhakim Qasawaad, a 24-year-old from the city of Homs, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We are scanning every face in the footage, searching for traces of our loved ones. This is the only thing that we can do.”

On Sunday, when rebel forces swept into the country’s capital and declared an end to Bashar al-Assad’s rule, families rushed to Saydnaya Prison outside Damascus, where political opponents were reportedly held, tortured and executed.

But with rescue workers now ending their search for possible detainees in the prison, some families face renewed anguish.

“Now freedom rings like a bell too loud for ears accustomed to silence,” Ms Qasawaad said.

“Now, our hearts racing, we have this anticipation, joy and pain as we await the moment when we can finally embrace them, free at last, but I don’t know if we can see them again, because now we are torn between finding answers or never knowing at all.”

A Syrian woman recalls how family members were taken when she was a child.

Ms Qasawaad was 12 years old when she witnessed soldiers drag the males in her family out of their home in the middle of the night on 28 January 2013. They were among 48 members of her family seized in a raid, she said.

Another of her brothers had already been killed fighting Assad’s army in 2012, she said, during a civil war that broke out after the Arab Spring protests in 2011.

Unidentified people react as they wait for news of loved ones outside Saydnaya prison in Syria

Getty Images Three people sit on the ground, leaning against a wall, at a prison. A woman and man appear to be crying as they hold hands, while a man holds their hand and has his hand out as if to calm them — Unidentified people react as they wait for news of loved ones outside Saydnaya prison in Syria

“No words can describe the overwhelming anguish that consumed us at that time,” she said.

She has not seen her male family members since then – but released prisoners said they heard their names from inside Saydnaya, she said.

Her grandfather, who was born in 1939, would now be elderly, while her father was born in 1962, and her brothers in 1989 and 1994.

Ms Qasawaad said that after the fall of Assad’s rule and the liberation of prisoners, her family is feeling “a mixture between laughter and tears”.

“We don’t know what will happen next, all we can do is keep searching,” she said. “We hope we have this spark of happiness again in our lives, because it was swept away with the day that they have taken them.”

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