Assad’s feared dungeons give up their secrets

An anti-government fighter steps on the head of a statue of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad that was brought down outside the Defence Ministry's military security headquarters in the Damascus district of Kafr Sousa on December 9, 2024. (AFP)
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An anti-government fighter steps on the head of a statue of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad that was brought down outside the Defence Ministry's military security headquarters in the Damascus district of Kafr Sousa on December 9, 2024. (AFP)
Assad’s feared dungeons give up their secrets
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People read registers found at the Saydnaya prison as they look for information on their loved ones while Syrian rescuers search for potential hidden basements at the facility in Damascus on December 9, 2024. (AFP)
Assad’s feared dungeons give up their secrets
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People read registers found at the Saydnaya prison as they look for information on their loved ones while Syrian rescuers search for potential hidden basements at the facility in Damascus on December 9, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 11 December 2024
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Assad’s feared dungeons give up their secrets

Assad’s feared dungeons give up their secrets
  • Thousands of intelligence files lay abandoned, many of them scattered on the floor, detailing the activities of ordinary citizens subjected to draconian surveillance by security service agents

DAMASCUS: Syrians lived in terror for decades of what went on behind the concrete walls of Damascus’s security compound. Now the Assad dynasty has been toppled, its dungeons and torture chambers are giving up their secrets.
Rebel fighters stand guard at the entrances to the forbidden city in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district, where the feared security services had their headquarters alongside government offices.
The myriad of different agencies which kept tabs on the lives of ordinary Syrians each operated their own underground prisons and interrogation chambers inside the walled defense ministry compound.




A woman looks through a list of names in a document found on the floor at the infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)

Syrians lived in fear of being summoned for a round of questioning from which they might never return.
AFP found first responder Sleiman Kahwaji wandering around the complex this week trying to locate the building where he was questioned and then detained.
He said he was still at secondary school when he was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of “terrorism,” a frequent allegation under the rule of now toppled president Bashar Assad, who brooked no dissent.

“I spent 55 days underground,” he said. “There were 55 of us in that dungeon. Two died, one from diabetes.”




This picture shows empty sells at Sednaya prison in Damascus on December 9, 2024. (AFP)

Scribbled graffiti left by the prisoners are barely legible on the walls amid the darkness.
“My dear mother,” one had scribbled, probably in his own blood.
The cells that were used for solitary confinement are so small there isn’t even space to lie down.
As many as 80 prisoners per cell were crammed into the larger ones, forcing inmates to take turns to sleep, recalls another former detainee Thaer Mustafa, who was arrested for alleged desertion.
All remaining prisoners were freed on Sunday after their captors fled as the rebels swept into Damascus capping the lightning offensive they launched late last month.
A large crowd broke into the security zone and ransacked the sprawling offices on the upper floors of the complex.
Thousands of intelligence files lay abandoned, many of them scattered on the floor, detailing the activities of ordinary citizens subjected to draconian surveillance by security service agents.
One handwritten document lists more than 10,000 prisoners held on suspicion of membership of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Sunni Islamist group was anathema to the Assad clan who are members of Syria’s Alawite minority, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Brotherhood membership became punishable by death since 1980 two years before Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez ordered the army to crush its insurgency with an assault on the central city of Hama which killed between 10,000 and 40,000 people.
Alongside each prisoner’s name and date of birth, the security services noted the details of their detention and interrogation, and whether and when they had died.
Another abandoned file details the detention of a Briton of Syrian origin, who was subjected to a lie detector test over allegations he was working for British intelligence.

Another, dated this January, details the investigation into a bomb attack on the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus, in which an Iraqi was wounded.
Nothing was considered too trivial to escape the security services’ attention. There are files recording the activities of ordinary citizens as well as journalists and religious leaders.
Not even government ministers were immune. On a list of members of Assad’s government, a security service agent has carefully noted the confession of each minister — Sunni or Alawite, Christian or Druze.
The security services operated vast networks of paid informers, who provided the tiniest details of people’s daily lives.
Families have been arriving at the gates of the Damascus security zone since Saturday, desperately seeking word on the fate of their missing loved ones.
Many come after first visiting Saydnaya Prison, a vast detention complex on the outskirts of Damascus where many of those who survived interrogation at security headquarters were taken for long-term incarceration.
“We heard that there were secret dungeons. I’m looking for my son Obada Amini, who was arrested in 2013,” said Khouloud Amini, 53, her husband and daughter by her side.
“He was in his fourth year at the engineering faculty, I went to Saydnaya but I didn’t find him.
“I was told there were underground dungeons here. I hope that all Syrian prisoners are freed.”

 


Netanyahu says Gaza ceasefire is still not complete, hours after US and Qatar announce deal

Netanyahu says Gaza ceasefire is still not complete, hours after US and Qatar announce deal
Updated 17 sec ago
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Netanyahu says Gaza ceasefire is still not complete, hours after US and Qatar announce deal

Netanyahu says Gaza ceasefire is still not complete, hours after US and Qatar announce deal
  • ’Final details’ of Gaza deal being worked out, Netanyahu’s office says
  • Mediators will next head to Cairo for talks on implementing the ceasefire

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the ceasefire agreement with Hamas is still not complete and final details are being worked out.

“An official statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be issued only after the completion of the final details of the agreement, which are being worked on at present,” his office said in a statement released at midnight.

Netanyahu has not said explicitly whether he accepts the deal announced hours earlier by Qatar’s prime minister and President Joe Biden.

In a statement, Netanyahu said he would only issue a formal response “after the final details of the agreement, which are currently being worked on, are completed.”

Netanyahu’s statement comes hours after the United States and Qatar announced the deal, which would pause the devastating 15-month war in Gaza and clear the way for dozens of hostages to go home. The conflict has destabilized the Middle East and sparked worldwide protests.

Egyptian, Qatar and US negotiators will head to Cairo on Thursday for further talks on implementing all aspects of the ceasefire deal, according to a senior US official.

The official said the negotiators are focused on making sure expectations are clear to both Israel and Hamas, and that implementation of the agreement is carried out as smoothly as possible.

The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest militant group after Hamas, hailed the ceasefire deal as “honorable.”

Hamas had needed the group’s support for the deal in order to avoid a potential disruption in the process.

“Today, our people and their resistance imposed an honorable agreement to stop the aggression,” Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a statement.

The group said the deal between Israel and Hamas includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza as well as an “honorable” prisoner exchange. It said that militant groups in Gaza “will remain vigilant to ensure the full implementation of this agreement.”

Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s fighters took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and have since been battling Israeli forces in Gaza.

Gazans celebrate

Large crowds of joyful Palestinians took to the streets in Gaza when the agreement was announced, cheering and honking car horns.

“No one can feel the feeling that we are experiencing now, an indescribable, indescribable feeling,” said Mahmoud Wadi in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah before joining a chanting crowd.

The Israel Hamas-war has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health authorities there. The Health Ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians, but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed about 1,200 people and abducted around 250. A third of the 100 hostages still held in Gaza are believed to be dead.


UN Security Council calls on countries to stop arming Houthis as Red Sea attacks continue

UN Security Council calls on countries to stop arming Houthis as Red Sea attacks continue
Updated 4 min 15 sec ago
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UN Security Council calls on countries to stop arming Houthis as Red Sea attacks continue

UN Security Council calls on countries to stop arming Houthis as Red Sea attacks continue
  • Resolution drafted by Greece and US calls for root causes of the attacks to be addressed, including ‘conflicts contributing to regional tensions’
  • Russia abstains from vote, describes draft resolution as ‘highly unbalanced and politicized’ because it fails to denounce attacks on Yemeni sovereignty by US, UK and Israel

NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council on Wednesday adopted a resolution that extends by six months the requirement for the secretary-general to provide monthly reports on attacks by the Houthis in Yemen against ships in the Red Sea.

The reporting obligation was established by the adoption of Resolution 2722 in January 2024, which was introduced in response to the repeated attacks on commercial shipping. The Iran-backed Houthis vowed to continue targeting vessels until Israel ended its war in Gaza.

The attacks prompted retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen by the US, UK and Israel. Meanwhile, the EU launched Operation Aspides, a defensive mission based in Greece that aims to safeguard and escort vessels in the Red Sea but does not participate in any offensive action.

The text of the extension resolution was drafted by Greece and the US, the co-penholders on the issue of the Red Sea crisis. Twelve members of the Security Council voted in favor, while Algeria, China and Russia abstained.

A source at the Russian mission in New York told Arab News that although the safety of maritime navigation is of the utmost importance to Moscow, it considered the language of Resolution 2763 to be “highly politicized and unbalanced” because it failed to mention “the attacks on the sovereignty of Yemen” in the form of airstrikes by the US, UK and Israel.

The text of the resolution, which was seen by Arab News, demands that the Houthis immediately cease all attacks against merchant and commercial vessels and release the cargo ship Galaxy Leader and its crew. The Houthis hijacked the vessel in November 2023 and 25 crew members remain detained by the group.

The new resolution also emphasizes the need “to address the root causes of these attacks, including the conflicts contributing to regional tensions and the disruption of maritime security.”

It notes the use of advanced weaponry by the Houthis and demands that UN member states stop supplying the group with arms.

Greece’s permanent representative to the UN, Evangelos Sekeris, told fellow council members that the “Houthis’ constant attacks against vessels are still disrupting international commercial shipping. Maritime security conditions remain degraded and are expected to further deteriorate, while rerouting of shipping companies continues in favor of safer but costlier alternative maritime routes.”

Sekeris lamented that fact that “we are still witnessing the Houthis’ ongoing aggressiveness and escalatory actions through launching unjustified attacks, with the systematic use of advanced weaponry such as anti-ballistic missiles and drones, even against civil infrastructure, including oil terminals under the control of the government of Yemen.”

He added: “The humanitarian repercussions are severe. We need to put an end to this, by looking thoroughly into the origins of the use of advanced weaponry and by preserving the applicability of the targeted arms embargo.”

This year, Greece, which has a keen interest in maritime security, took over from Japan as the co-penholder on the issue of the Red Sea crisis.

Maritime security is also a key concern for Denmark, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia, who took their seats as newly elected nonpermanent members of the Security Council at the start of this year.

Ships owned or operated by companies from Denmark, Greece and Panama have been targeted by the Houthis in the Red Sea, while Pakistan has participated in maritime-security operations in the Western Indian Ocean. Somalia has been dealing with piracy off its coast for several years.


UN chief calls for major aid boost to ease ‘immense’ Palestinian suffering, as he welcomes Gaza ceasefire

UN chief calls for major aid boost to ease ‘immense’ Palestinian suffering, as he welcomes Gaza ceasefire
Updated 27 min 52 sec ago
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UN chief calls for major aid boost to ease ‘immense’ Palestinian suffering, as he welcomes Gaza ceasefire

UN chief calls for major aid boost to ease ‘immense’ Palestinian suffering, as he welcomes Gaza ceasefire
  • Efforts to end the occupation and implement a 2-state solution should also be a top priority, says Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

NEW YORK CITY: Following the announcement on Wednesday of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the secretary-general of the UN said the primary focus now must be efforts to alleviate the “immense suffering” of civilians in the territory.

Antonio Guterres called for a “major increase” in the amount of urgent, lifesaving humanitarian aid for “the countless Palestinians” who continue to suffer.

“It is imperative that this ceasefire removes the significant security and political obstacles to delivering aid across Gaza so that we can support a major increase in urgent, lifesaving humanitarian support,” he said. “The humanitarian situation is at catastrophic levels.”

After weeks of painstaking negotiations in Doha, the ceasefire agreement was announced by the prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who said it would come into effect on Sunday.

The deal includes the phased release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and will enable hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza to return to what is left of their homes.

It also promises to clear the way for a surge in the amount of much-needed humanitarian aid entering the enclave, which has been devastated by 15 months of conflict.

As he welcomed the announcement of the ceasefire agreement and hostage deal, and praised the mediators for their “unwavering commitment,” Guterres called on all parties to ensure the agreement is fully implemented.

The deal is a “critical first step,” he said as he stressed the need to intensify efforts to achieve broader objectives, such as maintaining the unity, contiguity and integrity of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Palestinian unity is vital for lasting peace and stability, he added, and ensuring unified Palestinian governance must remain a top priority.

“I urge the parties and all relevant partners to seize this opportunity to establish a credible political path to a better future for Palestinians, Israelis and the broader region,” Guterres said.

“Ending the occupation and achieving a negotiated two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security, in line with international law, relevant UN resolutions and previous agreements, remain an urgent priority.

“Only through a viable two-state solution can the aspirations of both peoples be fulfilled.”

Guterres paid tribute to the civilians who lost their lives during the conflict, including UN personnel and humanitarian workers.

“The United Nations is steadfast in its commitment to supporting all efforts that promote peace, stability and a more hopeful future for the people of Palestine and Israel, and across the region,” he added.


UAE mediates exchange of 50 Russian, Ukrainian war captives

UAE mediates exchange of 50 Russian, Ukrainian war captives
Updated 16 January 2025
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UAE mediates exchange of 50 Russian, Ukrainian war captives

UAE mediates exchange of 50 Russian, Ukrainian war captives
  • UAE mediated the exchange of 2,583 captives since the Russian-Ukrainian war began in February 2022
  • Foreign Ministry says successful exchange reflects both sides’ trust in Emirati leadership, diplomacy

LONDON: UAE mediation efforts resulted in a new exchange of 50 prisoners of war between Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Moscow and Kyiv exchanged 25 Ukrainians and 25 Russians captured during the war between the neighboring states.

It brings the total number of captives exchanged through UAE mediation efforts to 2,583 since the war began in February 2022.

The UAE has long supported diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, Emirates News Agency reported.

The UAE Foreign Ministry said that the success of the eleventh captive exchange since 2024 reflects Russia and Ukraine’s trust in the Emirati leadership and diplomacy.

Abu Dhabi is committed to a peaceful resolution to the war in Eastern Europe and addressing its humanitarian impacts on refugees and captives, the ministry added.

Additionally, the UAE successfully facilitated the exchange of two prisoners between the US and Russia in December 2022.


More than 19.5m Yemenis in need as crisis worsens: UN

More than 19.5m Yemenis in need as crisis worsens: UN
Updated 16 January 2025
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More than 19.5m Yemenis in need as crisis worsens: UN

More than 19.5m Yemenis in need as crisis worsens: UN
  • “People in Yemen continue to face a severe humanitarian and protection crisis,” said Joyce Msuya, interim chief of the United Nations’ humanitarian agency
  • Around 17 million people — nearly half the country’s population — cannot meet their basic food needs

UNITED NATIONS: More than 19.5 million people in Yemen will need assistance in 2025, a senior UN official said Wednesday, expressing concern over a worsening humanitarian crisis and for children suffering from malnutrition.
“People in Yemen continue to face a severe humanitarian and protection crisis,” said Joyce Msuya, interim chief of the United Nations’ humanitarian agency (OCHA).
And the crisis will only get worse, she added, citing the organization’s forthcoming consolidated humanitarian appeal for 2025.
Around 17 million people — nearly half the country’s population — cannot meet their basic food needs, Msuya said.
“At least 19.5 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance and protection this year — 1.3 million more than in 2024,” she said.
On top of this, an estimated 4.8 million people remain internally displaced, the majority of whom are women and children.
Nearly half of children under five years old suffer from moderate to severe stunting caused by malnutrition, while the country’s stressed health system is overburdened by “appalling levels” of cholera.
Hans Grundberg, the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, who just visited the capital Sanaa that is controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi militants, stressed the need for “immediate de-escalation and genuine engagement for peace.”
“The need to address Yemen’s crisis becomes ever more urgent as regional stability requires, in part, achieving peace in Yemen,” he said.
Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the Houthis forced the internationally recognized government out of Sanaa. The militants have also seized population centers in the north.
A UN-brokered ceasefire in April 2022 calmed fighting and in December 2023 the warring parties committed to a peace process.
But tensions have surged during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, as the Houthis struck Israeli targets and international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, in a campaign the militants say is in solidarity with Palestinians.