DAMASCUS: Bewildered and elated prisoners poured out of Syrian jails on Sunday, shouting with joy as they emerged from one of the world’s most notorious detention systems and walked to freedom following the collapse of Bashar Assad’s government.
All across Syria, families wept as they were reunited with children, siblings, spouses and parents who vanished years ago into the impregnable gulag of the Assad dynasty’s five-decade rule.
A video verified by Reuters showed newly freed prisoners ran through the Damascus streets, holding up the fingers of both hands to show how many years they had been in prison, asking passers-by what had happened, not immediately understanding that Assad had fallen.
“We toppled the regime!” a voice shouted and a prisoner yelled and skipped with delight in the same video. A man watching the prisoners rush through the dawn streets put his hands to head, exclaiming with wonder: “Oh my god, the prisoners!“
Throughout the civil war that began in 2011, security forces held hundreds of thousands of people seized in detention camps where international human rights organizations say torture was universal practice. Families were often told nothing of the fate of their loved ones.
As insurgents seized one city after another in a dizzying eight-day campaign, prisons were often among their first objectives. The most notorious prisons in and around Damascus itself were finally opened on the uprising’s final night and the early hours of Sunday.
When they reached Sednaya prison, militants shot the lock off the gate, a video showed, using more gunfire to open closed doors leading to cells. Men poured out into corridors and a courtyard, cheering and helping them open more cells.
In a video uploaded by Step News Agency, a grey-haired man leapt into the arms of relatives in a sudden, disbelieving hug, the three men clasping each other and sobbing with joy before one fell to his knees, still clutching the freed man’s legs.
The pan-Arab Al Arabiya news channel showed a family arriving in Damascus by car from Jordan to meet their newly released son, the elderly mother’s voice breaking with emotion as she told the interviewer he had been freed after 14 years.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the locations of some of the videos, though no one disputed that prisons were opened across the country.
Relief and terror
In what was purported to be the women’s block at Sednaya prison on the Damascus outskirts, perhaps the most notorious in the country, a militant recorded the moment he reached cells and pulled open the doors for prisoners who seemed to have had little idea they were about to be freed.
“May God honor you!” a woman shouted to the men freeing her. As they left their cells a toddler could be seen walking the corridor, having apparently been held in the prison along with his mother.
“He (Assad) has fallen. Don’t be scared,” a voice shouts, trying to reassure the prisoners that they faced no more danger.
In another video, a deafening roar erupted as militants marched down a corridor, said to be in the prison at Mezzeh air base southwest of the old center of Damascus. Prisoners leaned through the bars at the top of doors and banged on the sides of their cells as shouts of joy echoed all around.
One video showed a shaven-headed man squatting on his heels, trembling and barely able to answer the militants asking his name and where he was from.
Over the years, thousands of Syrians were brusquely informed by authorities that their relatives had been executed, sometimes years earlier.
The United States said in 2017 it had evidence of a new crematorium built at Sednaya especially to dispose of bodies of thousands of inmates hanged during the war.
Some of the most disturbing information about Assad’s prison system came with thousands of photographs smuggled out of Syria by a military photographer codenamed Caesar who defected to the West in 2013.
His photographs of thousands of killed detainees showed clear marks of torture and starvation and for many families provided the first evidence that imprisoned relatives were dead.
A few miles from Sednaya early on Sunday, a stream of freed prisoners was recorded walking toward Damascus, many lugging sacks of belongings on their backs, and chanting “God is great!”
Bewildered, elated prisoners pour out as Assad’s jails flung open
https://arab.news/r74ey
Bewildered, elated prisoners pour out as Assad’s jails flung open
- Throughout the civil war that began in 2011, security forces held hundreds of thousands of people seized in detention camps
First rain of autumn falls in Iran’s capital, but the drought-ravaged nation needs far more
- Water service reportedly goes out for hours in some neighborhoods of Tehran, home to 10 million people
TEHRAN: Rain fell for the first time in months in Iran’s capital Wednesday, providing a brief respite for the parched Islamic Republic as it suffers through the driest autumn in over a half century.
The drought gripping Iran has seen its president warn the country it may need to move its government out of Tehran by the end of December if there’s not significant rainfall to recharge dams around the capital. Meteorologists have described this fall as the driest in over 50 years across the country — from even before its 1979 Islamic Revolution — further straining a system that expends vast amounts of water inefficiently on agriculture.
The water crisis has even become a political issue in the country, particularly as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly offered his country’s help to Iran, a nation he launched a 12-day war against in June. Water shortages also have sparked localized protests in the past, something Iran has been trying to avoid as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions over its nuclear program.
“The water crisis in Iran has, in recent years, escalated from a recurring drought issue into a profound political and security problem that has the regime leadership concerned,” the New York-based Soufan Center said.
Drying reservoirs, light snowpack challenge Iran
The drought has been a long subject of conversation across Tehran and wider Iran, from government officials openly discussing it with visiting journalists to people purchasing water tanks for their homes. In the capital, government-sponsored billboards call on the public not to use garden hoses outside to avoid waste. Water service reportedly goes out for hours in some neighborhoods of Tehran, home to 10 million people.
Snowpack on the surrounding Alborz Mountains remains low as well, particularly after a summer that saw temperatures rise near 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas of the country, forcing government buildings to shut down.
Ahad Vazifeh, an official in the government’s Iran Meteorological Organization office, called the drought “unprecedented” in an interview with the Fararu news outlet last week. Precipitation now stands at about 5 percent of what’s considered a normal autumn, he added.
“Even if rain in the winter and spring will be normal, we will have 20 percent shortage,” Vazifeh warned.
Social media videos show people standing in some reservoirs, the water lines clearly visible. Satellite pictures analyzed by The Associated Press also show reservoirs noticeably depleted. That includes the Latyan Dam — one of five key reservoirs — which is now under 10 percent full as Tehran has entered its sixth consecutive year of drought.
The state-owned Tehran Times newspaper, often following the theocracy’s line, was blunt about the scale of the challenge.
“Iran is facing an unprecedented water crisis that threatens not only its agricultural sector but also regional stability and global food markets,” the newspaper said in a story this past weekend. The faithful have also offered prayers for rain at the country’s mosques.
Long-arid Iran faces challenge of climate change
Iran, straddling the Mideast and Asia, long has been arid due to its geography. Its Alborz and Zagros mountain ranges cause a so-called “rain shadow” across much of the nation, blocking moisture coming from the Caspian Sea and the Arabian Gulf.
But the drain on the country’s water supplies has been self-inflicted. Agriculture uses an estimated 90 percent of the country’s water supplies. That hasn’t been stopped even through these recent drought years. That’s in part due to policies stemming from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who pledged water would be free for all. The intervening years of the Iran-Iraq war saw the country push for self-sufficiency above all else, irrigating arid lands to grow water-intensive crops like wheat and rice, and overdrilling wells.
Experts have described Iran as facing “water bankruptcy” over its decisions. In the past, Iranian officials have blamed their neighbors in part for their water shortage, with hard-line former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at one point falsely suggesting that “the enemy destroys the clouds that are headed toward our country and this is a war Iran will win.”
But that’s changed with the severity of the crisis leading to current President Masoud Pezeshkian warning the capital may need to be moved. However, such a decision would cost billions of dollars the country likely doesn’t have as it struggles through a major economic crisis.
Meanwhile, climate change likely has accelerated the droughts plaguing Iraq, which has seen the driest year on record since 1933, as well as Syria and Iran, said World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who study global warming’s role in extreme weather.
With the climate warmed by 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) due to fossil fuel burning, the severity of drought seen in Iran over the last year can be expected to return every 10 years, the group said. If the temperature hadn’t risen by that much, it could be expected between every 50 to 100 years, it added.
“The current acute crisis is part of a longer term water crisis in Iran and the wider region that results from a range of issues including, frequent droughts with increasing evaporation rates, water-intensive agriculture and unsustainable groundwater extraction,” World Weather Attribution said in a recent report.
“These combined pressures contribute to chronic water stress in major urban centers including Tehran, reportedly at risk of severe water shortages and emergency rationing, while also straining agricultural productivity and heightening competition over scarce resources.”
