Although hundreds of political prisoners have been released, many more are trapped underground in the ’red cells’ at the notorious Saydnaya prison.
Rebels who seized the Syrian capital, Damascus, at the weekend are exerting control over the country as a fragile peace remains in place between various armed groups.
Russia has confirmed the former president, Bashar al-Assad, has been given sanctuary in Moscow, ending more than 50 years of rule by his family, and bringing to a close civil war which broke out during the so-called Arab Spring of 2011 and lasted 13 years.
Russia’s ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, announced on his Telegram channel on Sunday that Assad—whose father Hafez ruled Syria since the early 1970s—had been given asylum in Moscow.
Assad, 59, appears to have fled Damascus on Saturday as rebels closed in on the city from at least two directions.
Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist group which remains designated as a terrorist group by the United States as it began as a wing of al-Qaeda, advanced from the north after capturing in rapid succession the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs.
Another group, known as the Southern Operations Room, advanced into Damascus after first capturing Daraa in southern Syria, a city where the uprising against the Assad regime first broke out in April 2011.
Western governments have welcomed the fall of the Assads but U.S. President Joe Biden said Syria faced, “a moment of risk and uncertainty.”
The head of the HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has been trying to assuage concerns both inside and outside his country about his Islamist movement.
HTS Hail ‘Great Victory’
Al-Golani, speaking to a huge crowd in a central square in Damascus on Sunday, said, “A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory.”
He said Syria would be, “a beacon for the Islamic nation.”
Al-Golani was speaking outside the Umayyad Mosque, a place of great religious significance as it contains a shrine to Yahya ibn Zakariyya, better known to Christians as John The Baptist.
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