Syrians search for loved ones missing in Assad’s jails

People stand outside the infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)
People stand outside the infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 09 December 2024
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Syrians search for loved ones missing in Assad’s jails

People stand outside the infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)
  • On Monday, rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets said they were searching for secret doors or basements in Saydnaya prison, looking for detainees

DAMASCUS: Syrian rescuers searched a jail synonymous with the worst atrocities of ousted president Bashar Assad’s rule, as people in the capital flocked to a central square Monday to celebrate their country’s freedom.
Assad fled Syria as militants swept into the capital, bringing to a spectacular end on Sunday five decades of brutal rule by his clan over a country ravaged by one of the deadliest wars of the century.
He oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 500,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes.
At the core of the system of rule that Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centers used to eliminate dissent by jailing those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party’s line.
On Monday, rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets said they were searching for secret doors or basements in Saydnaya prison, looking for any detainees who might be trapped.
“We are working with all our energy to reach a new hope, and we must be prepared for the worst,” the organization said in a statement.
Aida Taha, aged 65, said she had been “roaming the streets like a madwoman” in search of her brother, who was arrested in 2012.
She said she went to Saydnaya, where she believes some prisoners are still underground.
“The prison has three or four underground floors,” Taha said. “They say that the doors won’t open because they don’t have the proper codes.”
“We’ve been oppressed long enough, we want our children back,” she added.
While Syria has been at war for 13 years, the government’s collapse ended up coming in a matter of days, with a lightning offensive launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).
Rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, HTS is proscribed by Western governments as a terrorist group.
While it remains to be seen how HTS operates now that Assad is gone, it has sought to moderate its image and to assure Syria’s many religious minorities that they need not fear.
In central Damascus on Monday, despite all the uncertainties for the future, the joy was palpable.
“It’s indescribable, we never thought this nightmare would end, we are reborn,” 49-year-old Rim Ramadan, a civil servant at the finance ministry, told AFP.
“We were afraid for 55 years of speaking, even at home, we used to say the walls had ears,” Ramadan said, as people honked their car horns and rebels fired their guns into the air.
“We feel like we’re living a dream,” she added.
During the offensive launched on November 27, rebels wrested city after city from Assad’s control, opening the gates of prisons along the way and freeing thousands of people, many of them held on political charges.
Social media groups were alight with Syrians sharing images of detainees reportedly brought out from the dungeons, in a collective effort to reunite families with their loved ones, some of whom had been missing for years.
Others, like Fadwa Mahmoud, whose husband and son are missing, posted calls for help finding their missing relatives.
“Where are you, Maher and Abdel Aziz, it’s time for me to hear your news, oh God, please come back, let my joy become complete,” wrote Mahmoud, herself a former detainee.
US President Joe Biden said Assad should be “held accountable” as he called his downfall “a historic opportunity” for the people of Syria.
“The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice,” he said.
But he also cautioned that hard-line Islamist groups within the victorious rebel alliance would face scrutiny.
“Some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human right abuses,” Biden said.
The United States has taken note of recent statements by the rebels suggesting they were adopting a more moderate posture, but Biden said: “We will assess not just their words, but their actions.”
Amnesty International also called for perpetrators of rights violations to face justice, with its chief Agnes Callamard urging the forces that ousted Assad to “break free from the violence of the past.”
“Any political transition must ensure accountability for perpetrators of serious violations and guarantee that those responsible are held to account,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Monday.
How Assad might face justice remains unclear, especially after Russia refused on Monday to confirm reports by Russian news agencies that he had fled to Moscow.
The Syrian embassy in Moscow raised the flag of the opposition, and the Kremlin said it would discuss the status of its bases in Syria with the new authorities.
Russia played an instrumental role in keeping Assad in power, directly intervening in the war starting in 2015 and providing air cover to the army on the ground as it sought to crush the rebellion.
Iran, another key ally of Assad, said it expected its “friendly” ties with Syria to continue, with its foreign minister saying the ousted president “never asked” for Tehran’s help against the militant offensive.
Turkiye, historically a backer of the opposition, called for an “inclusive” new government in Syria, as the sheer unpredictability of the situation began to settle in.
“It is not just Assad’s regime falling, it is also the question of what comes in its place?” said Aron Lund, a specialist at the Century International think tank.
While Syria’s war began with a crackdown on grassroots democracy protests, it morphed over time and drew in jihadists and foreign powers backing opposing sides.
Israel, which borders Syria, sent troops into a buffer zone after Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step.”
Saar also said his country had struck “chemical weapons” in Syria, “in order that they will not fall in the hands of extremists.”
In northern Syria, a Turkish drone strike on a Kurdish-held area killed 11 civilians, six of them children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.


Gaza rescuers say eight dead in Israel strike on school building

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Gaza rescuers say eight dead in Israel strike on school building

Gaza rescuers say eight dead in Israel strike on school building
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed eight people, including two children and two women, were killed by Israeli shelling on the Halwa school
The Israeli military, in a statement, acknowledged it conducted a strike on the facility

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter on Saturday killed eight people, including two children, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed eight people, including two children and two women, were killed by Israeli shelling on the Halwa school in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia.
Bassal said the strike wounded 30 people, including 19 children, and that the Halwa school housed “thousands of displaced people.”
The Israeli military, in a statement, acknowledged it conducted a strike on the facility.
It said the air force “conducted a precise strike on terrorists in a command-and-control center” that had previously served as the Halwa school in Jabaliya.
It said it targeted the premises because “the school had been used by Hamas terrorists to plan and execute attacks.”
The attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for more than 14 months.
A strike on the United Nations-run Al-Jawni school in central Gaza on September 11 drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said six of its staff were among the 18 reported dead.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where thousands of Gazans have sought shelter — a charge denied by the Palestinian militant group.
At least 46,537 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
The October 7 attack that triggered it resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

Sudan army says entered key RSF-held Al-Jazira state capital

Sudan army says entered key RSF-held Al-Jazira state capital
Updated 25 min 54 sec ago
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Sudan army says entered key RSF-held Al-Jazira state capital

Sudan army says entered key RSF-held Al-Jazira state capital
  • The armed forces “congratulated” the Sudanese people in a statement on “our forces entering the city of Wad Madani this morning“
  • A video the army shared on social media showed fighters claiming to be inside Wad Madani

PORT SUDAN: The Sudanese military and allied armed groups launched an offensive Saturday on key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, entering the city after more than a year of paramilitary control, the army said.
The armed forces “congratulated” the Sudanese people in a statement on “our forces entering the city of Wad Madani this morning.”
Sudan’s army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries have been at war since April 2023, leading to what the UN calls the world’s worst displacement crisis and declarations of famine in parts of the northeast African country.
A video the army shared on social media showed fighters claiming to be inside Wad Madani, after an army source told AFP they had “stormed the city’s eastern entrance.”
The footage appeared to be shot on the western side of Hantoub Bridge in northern Wad Madani, which has been under RSF control since December 2023.
The office of army-allied government spokesman and Information Minister Khalid Al-Aiser said the army had “liberated” the city.
With a months-long communications blackout in place, AFP was not able to independently verify the situation on the ground.
“The army and allied fighters have spread out around us across the city’s streets,” one eyewitness told AFP from his home in central Wad Madani, requesting anonymity for his safety.
Eyewitnesses in army-controlled cities across Sudan reported dozens taking to the streets celebrating the army offensive.
In the early months of the war between the army and the RSF, more than half a million people had sought shelter in Al-Jazira, before a lightning offensive by paramilitary forces displaced upwards of 300,000 in December 2023, according to the United Nations.
Most have been repeatedly displaced since, as the feared paramilitaries — which the United States this week said have “committed genocide” — moved further and further south.
The war has killed tens of thousands and uprooted more than 12 million overall, more than three million of whom have fled across borders.


Franco-Algerian influencer to stand trial in March

Franco-Algerian influencer to stand trial in March
Updated 11 January 2025
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Franco-Algerian influencer to stand trial in March

Franco-Algerian influencer to stand trial in March
  • A diplomatic row between France and Algeria has flared up over the arrests of several Algerian social media influencers accused of inciting violence
  • Sofia Benlemmane, a Franco-Algerian woman in her fifties, was arrested on Thursday

LYON: A Franco-Algerian influencer, arrested as part of an investigation into online hate videos, appeared before French prosecutors on Saturday and will stand trial in March, authorities said.
A diplomatic row between France and Algeria has flared up over the arrests of several Algerian social media influencers accused of inciting violence.
Sofia Benlemmane, a Franco-Algerian woman in her fifties, was arrested on Thursday.
Followed on TikTok and Facebook by more than 300,000 people, she is accused of spreading hate messages and threats against Internet users and against opponents of the Algerian authorities, as well as insulting statements about France.
She was ordered to appear before a criminal court on March 18, the public prosecutor’s office said.
She is being prosecuted for a series of offenses including incitement to commit a crime, death threats and “public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion.”
The blogger had insulted a woman during a live broadcast in September, shouting “I hope you get killed, I hope they kill you.”
Her lawyer Frederic Lalliard argued that Benlemmane had committed no criminal offense, even though her comments “may irritate or shock.”
Benlemmane, a former football player, made headlines in 2001 when she was given a seven-month suspended prison sentence for entering the Stade de France pitch outside Paris with an Algerian flag during a France-Algeria friendly match.
Although she was firmly opposed to the government in Algiers in the past, her views have since changed and she now supports the current authorities in Algeria.
Several other Algerian influencers have been the target of legal proceedings in France for hate speech.
Former prime minister Gabriel Attal said that France should cancel a 1968 accord with Algeria that gives Algerians special rights to live and work in France because of the dispute over what he called “preachers of hate.”
Algeria won independence from France in 1962 after a seven-year war.


Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 32 killed in 48 hours

Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 32 killed in 48 hours
Updated 11 January 2025
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Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 32 killed in 48 hours

Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 32 killed in 48 hours
  • The ministry said at least 109,571 people have been wounded in more than 15 months of war
  • The ministry of health added 499 deaths to its death toll on Saturday

JERUSALEM: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that 32 people were killed in the Palestinian territory over the past 48 hours, taking the overall death toll to 46,537.
The ministry said at least 109,571 people have been wounded in more than 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack.
The ministry of health added 499 deaths to its death toll on Saturday, specifying they have now completed the data and confirmed identities on files whose information was incomplete.
A source in the ministry’s data collection department told AFP that all the 499 additional deaths were from the past several months.
The number of dead in Gaza has become a matter of bitter debate since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas in response to the Palestinian militant group’s unprecedented attack last year.
Israeli authorities have repeatedly questioned the credibility of the Gaza health ministry’s figures.
But a study published Friday by British medical journal The Lancet estimated that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was around 40 percent higher than recorded by the health ministry.
The new peer-reviewed study used data from the ministry, an online survey and social media obituaries, but only counted deaths from traumatic injuries. It did not include those from a lack of health care or food, or the thousands of missing believed to be buried under rubble.
The UN considers the Gaza health ministry’s numbers to be reliable.


Lebanon’s new president says to visit Saudi Arabia on first official trip

Lebanon’s new president says to visit Saudi Arabia on first official trip
Updated 11 January 2025
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Lebanon’s new president says to visit Saudi Arabia on first official trip

Lebanon’s new president says to visit Saudi Arabia on first official trip
  • Lebanese leader tells crown prince that ‘Saudi Arabia would be the first destination in his visits abroad’

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s newly-elected president, Joseph Aoun, will visit Saudi Arabia following an invitation from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to a statement posted on the Lebanese presidency’s X account on Saturday.

Prince Mohammed has congratulated Aoun, during a phone call, on his election and conveyed to him the congratulations of Saudi King Salman.

The Crown Prince also expressed his sincere congratulations and hopes for success to Aoun and the people of Lebanon, with wishes for further progress and prosperity.

Aoun told the crown prince that “Saudi Arabia would be the first destination in his visits abroad,” it said, after the Saudi prince called to congratulate him on taking office on Thursday following a two-year vacancy in the position.

The statement did not specify a date for the visit.

Aoun, 61, was elected as the country’s 14th president by parliamentarians during a second round of voting on Thursday, breaking a 26-month deadlock over the position.

In his speech after taking his oath of office before parliament, he said that the country was entering a new phase.

The Mediterranean country has been without a president since the term of Michel Aoun – not related – ended in October 2022, with tensions between the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and its opponents scuppering a dozen previous votes.