‘I met two prisoners who did not know their own names’

In the hours after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, hundreds have descended on the site which for many most encapsulated his oppressive rule: the Saydnaya prison.

The notorious military complex has been used to detain tens of thousands of people who fell foul of the Syrian government over the decades.

Among those searching for people who have vanished inside its walls was Dr Sharvan Ibesh, chief executive of the aid group Bahar.

He arrived there at midnight to help a friend search for her father, who she believes has been held there for 13 years.

Dr Ibesh described scenes of “chaos”, with hundreds of people inside the prison trying to find their loves ones.

“It was very disappointing. We did not find him and we got no information,” he told the BBC.

“My friend is so upset because for 13 years she dreamed of finding her father. We were told that many prisoners have been moved to another location.”

Dr Ibesh continued: “Hundreds of people were coming out of the prison and we were told we could not come in because so many people were getting in the way of the rescuers.”

Syrian civil defence group, the White Helmets, has been searching for inmates at Saydnaya following accounts from prisoners of secret entrances to underground cells, though none have been found.

A mosque 20km away is being used as a meeting place for released prisoners and their families.

When Ibesh visited there on Sunday, he saw several newly freed people clearly in a traumatised state, he told the BBC.

A group of people surrounded two men who had just been released, trying to help them.

“[They] had been held in the prison for several years and they were disorientated,” Ibesh said. “They didn’t even know the time zone.”

“People around them were asking ‘what’s your name’ and ‘how old are you?’, but they could not even answer those questions.”

It was hard to tell how old they were from looking at them, Ibesh said, adding: “The men were totally lost, they were just staring ahead.”

The Assad regime imprisoned hundreds of thousands of political prisoners. The Turkey-based Association of Detainees and The Missing in Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP) group described Saydnaya as a “death camp”.

Throughout the civil war, which began in 2011, government forces held hundreds of thousands of people in detention camps, where human rights groups say torture was common.