In less than two months, Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa has risen from rebel leader to interim president, after his Islamist group led a lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa was appointed Wednesday to lead Syria for an unspecified transitional period, and has been tasked with forming an interim legislature after the dissolution of the Assad era parliament and the suspension of the 2012 constitution.
The former jihadist has abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, trimmed his beard and donned a suit and tie to receive foreign dignitaries since ousting Assad from power on December 8.
The tall, sharp-eyed Sharaa has held a succession of interviews with foreign journalists, presenting himself as a patriot who wants to rebuild and reunite Syria, devastated and divided after almost 14 years of civil war.
Syria’s new authorities also announced Wednesday the dissolution of armed factions, including Sharaa’s own Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.
Since breaking ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016, Sharaa has sought to portray himself as a more moderate leader, and HTS has toned down its rhetoric, vowing to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.
But Sharaa has yet to calm misgivings among some analysts and Western governments that still class HTS as a terrorist organisation.
– ‘Pragmatic‘ –
“He is a pragmatic radical,” Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam, told AFP.
“In 2014, he was at the height of his radicalism,” Pierret said, referring to the period of the war when he sought to compete with the jihadist Islamic State group.
“Since then, he has moderated his rhetoric.”
Born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Mazzeh, an upscale district of Damascus.
In 2021, he told US broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family’s roots in the Golan Heights. He said his grandfather was among those forced to flee the territory after its capture by Israel in 1967.
According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that he was first drawn to jihadist thinking.
“It was as a result of this admiration for the 9/11 attackers that the first signs of jihadism began to surface in Jolani’s life, as he began attending secretive sermons and panel discussions in marginalised suburbs of Damascus,” the website said.
Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he left Syria to take part in the fight.
He joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organisation.
– Realist or opportunist? –
In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad’s rule erupted in Syria, he returned home and founded Al-Nusra Front, Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda.
In 2013, he refused to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would go on to become the emir of the Islamic State group, and instead pledged his loyalty to Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri.
A realist in his partisans’ eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Sharaa said in May 2015 that he, unlike IS, had no intention of launching attacks against the West.
He also proclaimed that should Assad be defeated, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority that the president’s clan stems from.
He cut ties with Al-Qaeda, claiming to do so in order to deprive the West of reasons to attack his organisation.
According to Pierret, he has since sought to chart a path towards becoming a credible statesman.
In January 2017, Sharaa imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, thereby taking control of swathes of Idlib province that had been cleared of government troops.
In areas under its grip, HTS developed a civil administration and established a semblance of a state in Idlib province, while crushing its rebel rivals.
Throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and human rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent, which the United Nations has classed as war crimes.
(Reuters) – Bashar al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his reign collapsed. Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were deceived or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events told Reuters.
Hours before he escaped for Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 army and security chiefs at the defence ministry on Saturday that Russian military support was on its way and urged ground forces to hold out, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity to speak about the briefing.
Civilian staff were none the wiser, too.
Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work he was going home but instead headed to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle.
He also called his media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his home to write him a speech, the aide said. She arrived to find no one was there.
“Assad didn’t even make a last stand. He didn’t even rally his own troops,” said Nadim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative regional think-tank. “He let his supporters face their own fate.”
Reuters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum. Interviews with 14 people familiar with his final days and hours in power paint a picture of a leader casting around for outside help to extend his 24-year rule before leaning on deception and stealth to plot his exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.
Most of the sources, who include aides in the former president’s inner circle, regional diplomats and security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked for their names to be withheld to freely discuss sensitive matters.
Assad didn’t even inform his younger brother, Maher, commander of the Army’s elite 4th Armoured Division, about his exit plan, according to three aides. Maher flew a helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.
Assad’s maternal cousins, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, were similarly left behind as Damascus fell to the rebels, according to a Syrian aide and Lebanese security official. The pair tried to flee by car to Lebanon but were ambushed on the way by rebels who shot Ehab dead and wounded Eyad, they said. There was no official confirmation of the death and Reuters was unable to independently verify the incident.
Assad himself fled Damascus by plane on Sunday, Dec. 8, flying under the radar with the aircraft’s transponder switched off, two regional diplomats said, escaping the clutches of rebels storming the capital. The dramatic exit ended his 24 years of rule and his family’s half a century of unbroken power, and brought the 13-year civil war to an abrupt halt.
He flew to Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, and from there on to Moscow.
Assad’s immediate family, wife Asma and their three children, were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former close aides and a senior regional official.
Videos of Assad’s home, taken by rebels and citizens who thronged the presidential complex following his flight and posted on social media, suggest he made a hasty exit, showing cooked food left on the stove and several personal belongings left behind, such as family photo albums.
RUSSIA AND IRAN: NO MILITARY RESCUE
There would be no military rescue from Russia, whose intervention in 2015 had helped turn the tide of the civil war in favour of Assad, or from his other staunch ally Iran.
This had been made clear to the Syrian leader in the days leading up to his exit, when he sought aid from various quarters in a desperate race to cling to power and secure his safety, according to the people interviewed by Reuters.
Assad visited Moscow on Nov. 28, a day after Syrian rebel forces attacked the northern province of Aleppo and lightning drive across the country, but his pleas for military intervention fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin which was unwilling to intervene, three regional diplomats said.
Hadi al-Bahra, the head of Syria’s main opposition abroad, said that Assad didn’t convey the reality of the situation to aides back home, citing a source within Assad’s close circle and a regional official.
“He told his commanders and associates after his Moscow trip that military support was coming,” Bahra added. “He was lying to them. The message he received from Moscow was negative.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Russia had spent a lot of effort in helping stabilise Syria in the past but its priority now was the conflict in Ukraine.
Four days after that trip, on Dec. 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met with Assad in Damascus. By that time, the rebels from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist group had taken control of Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo and were sweeping southwards as government forces crumbled.
Assad was visibly distressed during the meeting, and conceded that his army was too weakened to mount an effective resistance, a senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters.
Assad never requested that Tehran deploy forces in Syria though, according to two senior Iranian officials who said he understood that Israel could use any such intervention as a reason to target Iranian forces in Syria or even Iran itself.
The Kremlin and Russian foreign ministry declined to comment for this article, while the Iranian foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.
ASSAD CONFRONTS OWN DOWNFALL
After exhausting his options, Assad finally accepted the inevitability of his downfall and resolved to leave the country, ending his family’s dynastic rule which dates back to 1971.
Three members of Assad’s inner circle said he initially wanted to seek refuge in the United Arab Emirates, as rebels seized Aleppo and Homs and were advancing towards Damascus.
They said he was rebuffed by the Emiratis who feared an international backlash for harbouring a figure subject to U.S. and European sanctions for allegedly using chemical weapons in a crackdown on insurgents, accusations that Assad has rejected as a fabrication.
The UAE government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yet Moscow, while unwilling to intervene militarily, was not prepared to abandon Assad, according to a Russian diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, attending the Doha forum in Qatar on Saturday and Sunday, spearheaded the diplomatic effort to secure the safety of Assad, engaging Turkey and Qatar to leverage their connections to HTS to secure Assad’s safe exit to Russia, two regional officials said.
One Western security source said that Lavrov did “whatever he could” to secure Assad’s safe departure.
Qatar and Turkey made arrangements with HTS to facilitate Assad’s exit, three of the sources said, despite official claim by both countries that they had no contacts with HTS, which is designated by the U.S. and the U.N. as a terrorist organisation.
Moscow also coordinated with neighbouring states to ensure that a Russian plane leaving Syrian airspace with Assad on board would not be intercepted or targeted, three of the sources said.
Qatar’s foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to queries about Assad’s exit, while Reuters was unable to reach HTS for comment. A Turkish government official said there was no Russian request to use Turkish airspace for Assad’s flight, though didn’t address whether Ankara worked with HTS to facilitate the escape.
Assad’s last prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, said he spoke to his then-president on the phone on Saturday night at 10.30 pm.
“In our last call, I told him how difficult the situation was and that there was huge displacement (of people) from Homs toward Latakia … that there was panic and horror in the streets,” he told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV this week.
“He replied: ‘Tomorrow, we will see’,” Jalali added. “‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’, was the last thing he told me.”
Jalali said he tried to call Assad again as dawn broke on Sunday, but there was no response.
(Reuters) – Twenty-three-year-old Syrian military conscript Farhan al-Khouli was badly paid and demoralized. His army outpost in scrubland near the rebel-held city of Idlib should have had nine soldiers but it just had three, after some had bribed the commanding officers to escape serving, he said.
And, of the two conscripts with him, one was regarded by his superiors as mentally unfit and not trusted with a gun, Khouli said.
For years, the Islamist rebels of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had sat behind the nearby frontline, with Syria’s long civil war frozen. But on Wednesday, Nov. 27, Khouli’s commanding officer – at another post behind the frontlines – called his mobile phone to tell him a rebel convoy was heading his way.
The officer said the unit should stand its ground and fight.
Instead, Khouli put his phone on airplane mode, changed into civilian clothes, dropped his rifle and fled. As he walked along the road back south, other groups of soldiers were abandoning their posts too.
“I looked back and saw everyone walking behind me. When they saw one person flee, everyone started to toss their weapons and run,” he told Reuters this week in Damascus, where he has found work at a horse stable.
In a little less than two weeks, the rebels would sweep into the capital Damascus, toppling former president Bashar al-Assad as his army simply melted away. The rout abruptly ended a 13-year conflict that had killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Reuters spoke to a dozen sources including two Syrian army deserters, three senior Syrian officers, two Iraqi militia commanders working with the Syrian army, a Syrian security source and a source familiar with the thinking of Lebanese group Hezbollah, one of Assad’s main military allies.
A rebel fighter outside Syria’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate on December 11, 2024. (Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano)
The sources, along with intelligence documents Reuters found in an abandoned military office in the capital, painted a detailed picture of how Assad’s once-feared army had been hollowed out by the demoralization of troops, heavy reliance on foreign allies particularly for the command structure, and growing anger across the ranks at rampant corruption.
Most of the sources asked not to be named because they were not authorised to talk to media or feared retribution.
Since the war began in 2011, Assad’s army command had come to depend on allied Iranian and Iran-funded Lebanese and Iraqi forces to provide the best fighting units in Syria, all the senior sources said.
Crucially, much of the Syrian military’s operational command structure was run by Iranian military advisors and their militia allies, they said.
But many of the Iranian military advisers had left this spring after Israeli air strikes on Damascus, and the rest departed last week, said the Iraqi militia commanders, who worked alongside them.
Hezbollah fighters and commanders had already mostly left in October to focus on the escalating war in Lebanon with Israel, the source familiar with Hezbollah thinking said.
The Syrian army’s own central command and control centre no longer functioned well after the Iranian and Hezbollah officers left and the military lacked a defence strategy, particularly for Syria’s second city of Aleppo, a Syrian colonel, two Syrian security sources and a Lebanese security source familiar with the Syrian military said.
By contrast, rebels in the northwest, on paper numerically far weaker than the army, had spent years consolidating under a single operations room that coordinated their groups and units in battle, an International Crisis Group report said after the fall of Aleppo.
Reuters was unable to contact a current representative of the armed forces. Syria’s new most powerful figure, HTS chief Ahmad al-Sharaa told Reuters on Wednesday he would dissolve Syria’s security forces. Iran’s mission to the United Nations, the Iraqi militias and Hezbollah did not respond to requests for comment.
ALEPPO
As Aleppo came under attack in late November, army units were not given a clear plan but were told to work it out for themselves or to fall back to the strategic city of Homs to try to regroup, two Syrian security sources said.
Aleppo fell without a major fight on Nov. 29, just two days after the offensive began, sending shockwaves through the military, three senior Syrian officers said.
What was left on the ground was a Syrian army severely lacking in cohesion, all the sources said, describing multiple units that were undermanned because officers were accepting bribes to let soldiers off duty, or had told soldiers to go home and were collecting their salaries themselves.
In 2020, the army had 130,000 personnel, according to think tank IISS’ Military Balance report, describing it as significantly depleted by the long civil war and transformed into an irregularly structured, militia-style organisation focused on internal security.
A member of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces walks near a military aircraft inside Qamishli airport on December 9, 2024 after Syrian rebels announced they had ousted Assad. (Photo: REUTERS/Orhan Qereman)
In the days ahead of the regime’s collapse on Sunday, the United States had information of broad levels of desertions and military forces changing sides, as well as some elements fleeing to Iraq, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
Reuters could not establish the overall manpower shortage in the military or current force strength.
The Syrian army sources described officers and troops alike as demoralised by pay that was consistently low even after painful military victories earlier in the war and by reports, which Reuters could not verify, that Assad’s close family were growing immensely rich.
On Nov. 28, the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces issued a telegram, ordering all troops to be on full combat readiness, according to a military document found by Reuters at an Air Intelligence office in Damascus.
In a sign the regime was desperate, Syria’s Air Intelligence Directorate, a key agency close to the Assad family, accused its men of “laxity” at checkpoints throughout the country after one was overrun by rebels in the south on Dec. 1, and warned of punishment “without leniency” if they did not fight, the document seen by Reuters shows.
Despite the orders and threats, increasing numbers of soldiers and officers began to desert, all the sources said.
Instead of confronting the rebels, or even unarmed protesters, soldiers were seen by residents of Syrian cities, and in many videos that began circulating online, abandoning their posts, changing into civilian clothes and going home.
Reuters journalists entering Syria on Sunday found army uniforms still strewn across Damascus streets.
OFFICERS
The corruption and poor morale went up through the ranks.
Many midranking officers had been growing increasingly angry in recent years that the army’s sacrifices and successes during the war were not reflected in better pay, conditions and resources, two serving, one recently retired and one defected officer said.
In 2020, Russia and Turkey agreed a deal that froze the frontlines after Assad retook all major cities and the main highway linking Damascus to Aleppo, further partitioning a country also split by Kurdish-controlled areas.
A man holds a representation of the Syrian opposition flag, as Syrian refugees celebrate, after Syrian rebels announced that they have ousted Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Bonn, Germany, December 8, 2024. (REUTERS)
But Syria’s economy continued to reel from U.S. sanctions and reduced foreign aid, said Aron Lund, a fellow at Middle East-focused think tank Century International. Rampant inflation ensued.
“Things just got worse for everyone, except for the oligarchs and elites around Assad. That seems to have been incredibly demoralizing,” Lund said.
While decrees in 2021 roughly doubled military salaries to keep up with inflation that topped 100% that year, buying power rapidly fell anyway as the Syrian pound crashed against the dollar.
Col. Makhlouf Makhlouf, who served in an engineering brigade, said that if anybody complained about corruption they were called in for questioning at a military court – something that had happened to him more than once.
“We were living in a scary society. We were afraid to say a word,” Makhlouf said. He had been stationed in Hama but deserted before the city fell to the rebels on Dec. 5, he said in an interview in Aleppo on Tuesday.
Anger had been building particularly over the past year or so, a serving senior military intelligence officer said, saying there was “growing resentment against Assad,” including among core high-ranking supporters from his Alawite minority community.
YEARS OF DECAY
Khouli’s military experience illustrated the army’s problems – and helps explain his lack of loyalty.
He was drafted for the obligatory 18-month service at age 19, after having paid-off an officer to delay his service for a year.
When his service period expired, he was ordered to remain in the army indefinitely. He deserted but was later picked up by a patrol, put in prison for 52 days and then sent to the remote outpost near Idlib.
He was paid 500,000 Syrian pounds ($40) a month. Army rations were often pillaged before arriving. Sometimes his entire pay went on buying more food, he said.
Comrades with money would pay officers $100, which he lacked, to get out of service, Khouli said. Khouli’s brigade was supposed to have 80 soldiers, but in fact there were only 60, he said.
He described bad treatment from officers, including being assigned heavy manual labour digging earth berms in both very hot and very cold weather and during nights.
Reuters was not able to verify independently the details of his experiences.
One former major described the use of forced conscripts as a “fatal mistake”.
A former army logistics serviceman, Zuhair, 28, said in an interview in Damascus on Tuesday he had seen officers steal and sell electricity generators and fuel. “All they cared about was using their positions to enrich themselves,” he said.
He had fought for Assad for years but he had cousins among the rebels and when they advanced, he cheered, he said. “I don’t know how to describe how happy I am,” he said.
RELIANCE ON ALLIES
To fight back the earlier opposition uprising, which began with protests in 2011, Assad relied on allies. Russia sent jets that bombed rebel positions, Iran sent military advisers and fighters from Hezbollah. Iran-backed militias from Iraq and another group it formed from Afghan Shi’ite fighters also came.
Rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham drive on a motorbike in al-Rashideen, Aleppo province, Syria on November 29, 2024. (Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Hasano)
Their fighting skill and well-being contrasted with Syria’s own soldiers. An Iraqi militia commander serving near Aleppo said he knew of a Syrian platoon meant to consist of 30 soldiers that had only eight present.
The militia often invited those soldiers to eat with them out of pity at the poor condition of their rations, the commander said.
Hezbollah and allied militias regarded the regular Syrian forces with little more than contempt, the Iraqi militia commanders and a source familiar with Hezbollah thinking said.
They did not trust them for important operations and often would not fight alongside them, those sources added.
OCT. 7 HAMAS ATTACKS
Iran’s presence in Syria was curtailed in the months following the attack on Israel by Tehran-backed Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, the Iraqi militia commander based near Aleppo and an Iraqi military adviser based in Damascus said.
Israel’s response to Hamas’ incursion included escalating strikes on Iran-linked targets, including in Syria.
On April 1, a strike killed top commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards at a building in an Iranian consular compound in Damascus. Israel has not confirmed or denied responsibility for the strike.
The Iraqi sources both said the number of Revolutionary Guards commanders present in Syria dropped significantly after that. One said Syria’s military operations command became ineffective as a result, a situation exacerbated by the withdrawal of Hezbollah in October.
Russia conducted air strikes on rebels as they advanced on Hama and Homs, both sides said at the time, but unlike in earlier phases of the war there were no effective ground forces able to benefit.
By Saturday, Dec. 7, Russia was calling for a political transition. The Kremlin and Russia foreign ministry declined to comment for this story. Russia, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, had “spent a lot of effort” to help Assad during the civil war but the situation had then deteriorated.
In Aleppo, Syrian forces had relied on Hezbollah to provide operational command, an Alawite Syrian army colonel said. Without Iranian advisers or Hezbollah, the army could not hold onto territory near the city, the colonel, the Iraqi commander and the Iraqi adviser said.
Iraqi militias sent more fighters to Syria last week, but they found all the contact channels to Iranian military advisors had been cut, the Iraqi commander said.
On Friday, after rebels had taken the city of Hama, the Iraqi groups were told to leave, he said.
“The battle for Syria was lost from day one,” the Iraqi military adviser added.
Syrian rebel fighters have destroyed the tomb of late president Hafez al-Assad, father of ousted president Bashar, in the family’s hometown.
Videos doing rounds showed armed men chanting as they walked around the burning mausoleum in Qardaha, in the north-west of the coastal Latakia region.
The rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) swept across Syria in a lightning offensive that toppled the Assad dynasty’s 54-year rule. Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia where he and his family have been given asylum.
Statues and posters of Hafez and his son have been pulled down across the country to cheers from Syrians celebrating the end of their rule.
In 2011, Bashar al-Assad brutally crushed a peaceful pro-democracy uprising, sparking a devastating civil war in which more than half a million people have been killed and 12 million others forced to flee their homes.
Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria ruthlessly from 1971 until his death in 2000, when power was handed to his son.
He was born and raised in a family of Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam and a religious minority in Syria, whose main centre of population is in Latakia province near the Mediterranean coast near the border with Turkey.
Many Alawites – who make up about 10% of the country’s population – were staunch supporters of the Assads during their long stay in power.
Some of them now fear that they may be targeted by the victorious rebels.
On Monday, a rebel delegation with members of HTS and another Sunni Muslim group, the Free Syrian Army, met Qardaha elders and received their support, according to Reuters news agency.
The rebel delegation signed a document, which Reuters reported emphasised Syria’s religious and cultural diversity.
HTS and allied rebel factions seized control of the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday after years of civil war.
HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who has now started using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is a former jihadist who cut ties with al-Qaeda in 2016. He has recently pledged tolerance for different religious groups and communities.
The UN envoy for Syria has said the rebels must transform their “good messages” into practice on the ground.
The US secretary of state meanwhile said Washington would recognise and fully support a future Syrian government so long as it emerged from a credible, inclusive process that respected minorities.
HTS has appointed a transitional government led by Mohammed al-Bashir, the former head of the rebel administration in the north-west, until March 2025.
Bashir chaired a meeting in Damascus on Tuesday attended by members of his new government and those of Assad’s former cabinet to discuss the transfer of portfolios and institutions.
Images and video footage from Sednaya Prison near Damascus have unveiled the brutal treatment of detainees by the deposed Syrian regime.
A 2017 report by Amnesty International called Sednaya a “slaughterhouse,” documenting abuse against detainees, including rape, torture and executions.
According to data compiled by Anadolu from open sources regarding torture and executions in Sednaya, there are two detention centers within the prison compound: the “White Building” and the “Red Building.”
International reports revealed that the Bashar al-Assad regime carried out extrajudicial executions through “mass hangings” at Sednaya, intentionally subjecting detainees to inhumane conditions and systematically depriving them of food, water, and medical care.
Most of the detainees held in the “Red Building” were civilians arrested since 2011 at the onset of the Syrian uprising. Meanwhile, the “White Building” housed officers and soldiers detained for alleged “disloyalty” to the regime.
According to statements from officials and former detainees, the majority of those held in the “Red Building” since 2011 were civilians from all segments of society.
Meat lockers
Former prisoners recounted being transferred to Sednaya from various security branches of the deposed regime in white trucks known as “meat lockers.”
They reported enduring severe beatings and torture upon arrival at the prison, a practice referred to by prison authorities as a “welcome party.”
According to a report by the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), the Baath regime employed 72 different methods of torture, including physical, psychological, and sexual violence.
Thousands of people were killed in the “Red Building” through secret executions after being held in inhumane conditions, SNHR said.
Executions were carried out in the “execution chamber” located in the southeastern corner of the White Building, typically in the middle of the night.
Reports indicate that between 2011 and 2015, approximately 50 people were hanged every week, and sometimes every two weeks.
After the executions, the victims’ bodies were loaded onto trucks and transported to Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus for record-keeping.
Their deaths were falsely documented as caused by heart or respiratory conditions, after which the bodies were sent to the Tishreen morgue and subsequently to mass graves.
These mass graves are located on military land near Damascus and in Najha village along the main road between Sweida and Damascus.
Assad fled to Russia after anti-regime groups entered Damascus on Dec. 8 and took control of the capital as regime forces withdrew from public institutions, marking the end of 61 years of the Baath Party’s bloody rule and 53 years of Assad family dominance.
BBC—Since the collapse of the Assad regime on Sunday, Syrian civilians hoping for news of their relatives have been flocking towards the country’s most secretive and notorious prison, Saydnaya.
Established in the early 1980s in a small town about 30km north of the capital Damascus, Saydnaya is where the Assad family has held opponents of their regime for decades.
Referred to as a “human slaughterhouse” by rights groups, thousands of people are said to have been detained, tortured and executed at the prison since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.
The layout of Saydnaya has been a closely guarded secret and images from inside the prison have never been seen before.
Details of the prison’s layout can only be established based on interviews with former guards and detainees.
But information from rights groups and the US State Department have offered an insight into the building which became a powerful symbol of the Assads’ brutal and repressive rule.
A sprawling ‘slaughterhouse’
Saydnaya was for decades administered by the Syrian military police and military intelligence, with construction beginning in the early 1980s. The first detainees arrived at the 1.4 sq km facility in 1987 – 16 years into the rule of President Hafeez al-Assad, Bashar’s father.
Once fully operational the prison contained two main detention facilities. The White Building was, according to rights groups, mainly built to hold military officers and troops suspected of being disloyal to the regime. It was an L-shaped complex in the south-east of the sprawling complex.
The Red Building – the main prison – was for opponents of the regime, initially comprising those suspected of membership of Islamist groups. This wing was noted for its distinctive Y-shape, with three straight corridors spreading out from a central hub.
Around 10,000-20,000 people could be housed between the two buildings, according to rights groups that have spoken to released prisoners. Videos circulating online since Sunday – which have been authenticated by BBC Verify – showed a large surveillance room in the prison filled with CCTV screens showing what appeared to be dozens of prison cells.
A 2017 report by Amnesty International citing ex-guards at the prison found that after the Syrian civil war began in 2011 the White Building was emptied of existing prisoners, and prepared instead to house those detained for taking part in protests opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
One former officer told Amnesty that “after 2011, [Saydnaya] became the main political prison in Syria”.
The organisation also quoted testimony from former prisoners claiming that those held in the Red Building were frequently exposed to various methods of torture, including severe beatings, rape and denial of access to food and medicine.
Housed beneath the White Building is what those speaking to Amnesty called an “execution room”, where detainees in the Red Building would be transported to be hanged.
A former guard said that a list of those to be executed from the Red Building would arrive at lunchtime. Troops would then take those marked for death to a basement holding cell – which could sometimes contain up to 100 people – where they were subjected to beatings.
Prisoners who spoke to Amnesty said detainees in the Red Building were typically “transferred” from the building in the dead of night – usually between midnight and 03:00.
Blindfolded detainees were then led down a flight of stairs into the “execution room” in the south-east section of the White Building, before being led up onto a one metre-high platform with 10 nooses from which they were hanged.
According to Amnesty, in 2012 the room was expanded, with a second platform with 20 more nooses. In footage shared by rebel-affiliated media after the fall of the regime, fighters displayed dozens of nooses they found in rooms around Saydnaya.
It is estimated by rights groups that more than 30,000 detainees had either been executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation between 2011 and 2018. Citing accounts from the few released inmates, at least another 500 detainees had been executed between 2018 and 2021, the Association of the Missing and Detainees in Saydnaya Prison (AMDSP) said in 2022.
In 2017, the US State Department claimed that authorities had constructed a possible crematoriumon the site to dispose of the remains of murdered prisoners. In the images below, a small wing can be seen adjoining the White Building.
A State Department spokesperson said officials had built the facility as part of “an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place in Saydnaya prison”.
Satellite images released by US investigators showed a structure which they said was a small building converted into a crematorium. Officials said snow melt on the roof of the building helped to back up their claims – adding that at least 50 prisoners a day were being hanged at the facility at the time.
Intense security surrounded the complex
Throughout its history, the facility was heavily guarded, with fortifications surrounding the grounds.
The exterior of the prison was patrolled by a detachment of 200 troops from the military, with an additional 250 soldiers from military intelligence and the military police responsible for interior security, according to the 2022 report from AMDSP.
Troops from the 21st Brigade of the army’s Third Division were chosen to defend the prison because of their strong loyalty to the regime. Soldiers were commanded by officers from President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority.
Since the downfall of the Assad regime, civilians have been urged to avoid rushing through the perimeter of the prison. Rights groups say the exterior of the complex is known to be heavily mined. A ring of anti-tank munitions runs around the exterior of the prison, with a secondary ring of anti-personnel mines running through the centre of the facility.
Images released by the White Helmets – a Syrian civil defence group – showed high walls topped with barbed wire also surrounding the complex. Guard towers can also be seen dotted around the facility.
The Assad regime always denied the accusations levelled against it by international organisation, calling them “baseless” and “devoid of truth”.
Amnesty says for families who suspect their relatives have been held in Saydnaya the fall of the regime “raises the prospect that they could finally discover the fate of their missing loved ones, in some cases decades later”.
BBC—Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani has dropped that nom de guerre associated with his jihadist past, and been using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in official communiques issued since Thursday, ahead of the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.
This move is part of Jawlani’s effort to bolster his legitimacy in a new context, as his Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), leading other rebel factions, announces the capture of the Syrian capital, Damascus, solidifying its control over much of the country.
Jawlani’s transformation is not recent, but has been carefully cultivated over the years, evident not only in his public statements and interviews with international outlets but also in his evolving appearance.
Once clad in traditional jihadist militant attire, he has adopted a more Western-style wardrobe in the past years. Now, as he leads the offensive, he has donned military fatigues, symbolising his role as the commander of the operations room.
But who is Jawlani – or Ahmed al-Sharaa – and why and how has he changed?
The IS-Iraq link
A 2021 PBS interview with Jawlani revealed that he was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as an oil engineer until 1989.
In that year, the Jawlani family returned to Syria, where he grew up and lived in the Mezzeh neighbourhood of Damascus.
Jawlani’s journey as a jihadist began in Iraq, linked to al-Qaeda through the Islamic State (IS) group’s precursor – al-Qaeda in Iraq and, later, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).
After the 2003 US-led invasion, he joined other foreign fighters in Iraq and, in 2005, was imprisoned at Camp Bucca, where he enhanced his jihadist affiliations and later on was introduced to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the quiet scholar who would later go on to lead IS.
In 2011, Baghdadi sent Jawlani to Syria with funding to establish al-Nusra Front, a covert faction tied to ISI. By 2012, Nusra had become a prominent Syrian fighting force, hiding its IS and al-Qaeda ties.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sent Jawlani to Syria to establish Al-Nusra Front.
Tensions arose in 2013 when Baghdadi’s group in Iraq unilaterally declared the merger of the two groups (ISI and Nusra), declaring the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), and publicly revealing for the first time the links between them.
Jawlani resisted, as he wanted to distance his group from ISI’s violent tactics, leading to a split.
To get out of that sticky situation, Jawlani pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, making Nusra Front its Syrian branch.
From the start, he prioritised winning Syrian support, distancing himself from IS’s brutality and emphasising a more pragmatic approach to jihad.
Joining al-Qaeda
In April 2013, al-Nusra Front became al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, putting it at odds with IS.
While Jawlani’s move was partly an attempt to maintain local support and avoid alienating Syrians and rebel factions, the al-Qaeda affiliation ultimately did little to benefit this effort.
It became a pressing challenge in 2015 when Nusra and other factions captured Idlib province, forcing them to co-operate in its administration.
Jawlani rebranded al-Nusra Front as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in 2016. The following year it became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
In 2016, Jawlani severed ties with al-Qaeda, rebranding the group as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and later as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017.
While initially appearing superficial, the split revealed deeper divisions. Al-Qaeda accused Jawlani of betrayal, leading to defections and the formation of Hurras al-Din, a new al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which HTS later crushed in 2020. Members of Hurras al-Din, however, have remained cautiously present in the region.
HTS also targeted IS operatives and foreign fighters in Idlib, dismantling their networks and forcing some to undergo “deradicalisation” programmes.
These moves, justified as efforts to unify militant forces and reduce infighting, signalled Jawlani’s strategy to position HTS as a dominant and politically viable force in Syria.
Despite the public split from al-Qaeda and name changes, HTS continued to be designated by the UN, US, UK and other countries as a terrorist organisation, and the US maintained a $10m reward for information about Jawlani’s whereabouts. Western powers considered the break-up to be a façade.
Forming a ‘government’ in Idlib
Jawlani gave a press conference following the devastating 2023 earthquakes in Syria
Under Jawlani, HTS became the dominant force in Idlib, north-west Syria’s largest rebel stronghold and home to about four million people, many of whom were displaced from other Syrian provinces.
To address concerns about a militant group governing the area, HTS established a civilian front, the so-called “Syrian Salvation Government” (SG) in 2017 as its political and administrative arm.
The SG functioned like a state, with a prime minister, ministries and local departments overseeing sectors such as education, health and reconstruction, while maintaining a religious council guided by Sharia, or Islamic law.
Jawlani was pictured looking at a painting of the Umayyad Mosque during a visit to a book, arts and culture fair in Idlib in 2022
To reshape his image, Jawlani actively engaged with the public, visiting displacement camps, attending events, and overseeing aid efforts, particularly during crises like the 2023 earthquakes.
HTS highlighted achievements in governance and infrastructure to legitimise its rule and demonstrate its ability to provide stability and services.
It has previously praised the Taliban, upon their return to power in 2021, lauding them as an inspiration and a model for effectively balancing jihadist efforts with political aspirations, including making tactical compromises to achieve their goals.
Jawlani’s efforts in Idlib reflected his broader strategy to demonstrate HTS’s ability not only to wage jihad but also to govern effectively.
By prioritising stability, public services and reconstruction, he aimed to showcase Idlib as a model of success under HTS rule, enhancing both his group’s legitimacy and his own political aspirations.
But under his leadership, HTS has crushed and marginalised other militant factions, both jihadists and rebel ones, in its effort to consolidate its power and dominate the scene.
Anti-HTS protests
For over a year leading up to the HTS-led rebel offensive on 27 November, Jawlani faced protests in Idlib from hardline Islamists as well as Syrian activists.
Critics compared his rule to Assad’s, accusing HTS of authoritarianism, suppressing dissent and silencing critics. Protesters labelled HTS’s security forces as “Shabbiha”, a term used to describe Assad’s loyalist henchmen.
They further alleged that HTS deliberately avoided meaningful combat against government forces and marginalised jihadists and foreign fighters in Idlib to prevent them from engaging in such actions, all to appease international actors.
Even during the latest offensive, activists have persistently urged HTS to release individuals imprisoned in Idlib allegedly for expressing dissent.
In response to these criticisms, HTS initiated several reforms over the past year. It disbanded or rebranded a controversial security force accused of human rights violations and established a “Department of Grievances” to allow citizens to lodge complaints against the group. Its critics said these measures were just a show to contain dissent.
Earlier this year, protesters in Idlib demanded the release of detainees and an end to HTS’s rule.
To justify its consolidation of power in Idlib and the suppression of plurality among militant groups, HTS argued that unifying under a single leadership was crucial for making progress and ultimately overthrowing the Syrian government.
HTS and its civilian arm, the SG, walked a tightrope, striving to project a modern, moderate image to win over both the local population and the international community, while simultaneously maintaining their Islamist identity to satisfy hardliners within rebel-held areas and HTS’s own ranks.
For instance, in December 2023, HTS and the SG faced a backlash after a “festival” held at a glossy new shopping mall was criticised by hardliners as “immoral”.
And this August, a Paralympic Games-inspired ceremony drew sharp criticism from hardliners, prompting the SG to review the organisation of such events.
These incidents illustrate the challenges HTS faces in reconciling the expectations of its Islamist base with the broader demands of the Syrian population, who are seeking freedom and coexistence after years of authoritarian rule under Assad.
Leading a new path?
As the latest offensive unfolded, global media focused on Jawlani’s jihadist past, prompting some rebel supporters to call for him to step back, viewing him as a liability.
Although he previously expressed willingness to dissolve his group and step aside, his recent actions and public appearances tell a different story.
HTS’s success in uniting rebels and nearly capturing the whole country in under two weeks has strengthened Jawlani’s position, quieting hardline critics and accusations of opportunism.
HTS and its allies launched the offensive that overthrew Assad at the end of November
Jawlani and the SG have since reassured domestic and international audiences.
To Syrians, including minorities, they promised safety; to neighbours and powers like Russia, they pledged peaceful relations. Jawlani even assured Russia its Syrian bases would remain unharmed if attacks ceased.
This shift reflects HTS’s “moderate jihad” strategy since 2017, emphasising pragmatism over rigid ideology.
Jawlani’s approach could signal the decline of global jihad movements like IS and al-Qaeda, whose inflexibility is increasingly seen as ineffective and unsustainable.
His trajectory might inspire other groups to adapt, marking either a new era of localised, politically flexible “jihadism” or just a temporary divergence from the traditional path in order to make political and territorial gains.
Bashar al-Assad has “stepped down” as president and “left Syria”, his ally Russia says, hours after rebel forces took control of the capital Damascus.
The Russian foreign ministry gave no further details about Assad’s whereabouts, but it was the first official statement saying he had fled the country.
Assad has not been pictured since he met Iranian foreign minister in Damascus a week ago. That day, he vowed to “crush” the rebels seizing territory with dizzying speed.
Early on Sunday morning, after their fighters entered the city without resistance, the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies declared that “the tyrant Bashar al-Assad has fled”.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, also reported that a plane believed to be carrying Assad “left Syria via Damascus international airport before the army security forces left” the facility. Rami Abdul Rahman said he had information that the plane was meant to take off at 22:00 (20:00 GMT) on Saturday.
The Flightradar24 website did not record a departure around that time, although a Cham Wings Airlines Airbus A320 passenger plane did leave at around 00:56 on Sunday bound for Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The plane landed in Sharjah on time. But a diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates told reporters in Bahrain that he did not know if Assad was in the UAE.
Reuters news agency meanwhile cited two unnamed senior Syrian army officers as saying that Assad had boarded a Syrian Air plane at Damascus airport early on Sunday.
It noted that a Syrian Air Ilyushin Il-76T cargo plane took off from the airport at 03:59 local time (01:59 GMT) with an undisclosed destination.
According to data from Flightradar24, the plane initially flew east away from the capital before turning to the north-west and heading towards the Mediterranean coast, which is a stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect and is also home to Russian naval and air bases.
After flying over the central city of Homs – which fell to the rebels on Saturday night – at an altitude of 20,000ft (6,095m) the plane made a U-turn and started flying eastwards again while also losing altitude.
The plane’s transponder signal was lost at around 04:39 (02:39 GMT), when it was about 13km (8 miles) west of Homs and flying at an altitude 1,625ft (495m).
Flightradar24 said in a post on X that the aircraft “was old with an older transponder generation, so some data might be bad or missing”, that it was “flying in an area of GPS jamming, so some data might be bad”, and that there was not aware of any airports in the area where the signal was lost.
There have not been any reports of a plane crash in the same area.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad boarded a plane and left to an unknown destination, this is according to a news update by Reuters citing two senior army officers familiar with the incident.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels said on Sunday they have begun entering the capital Damascus without any sign of army deployments.
“We celebrate with the Syrian people the news of freeing our prisoners and releasing their chains and announcing the end of the era of injustice in Sednaya prison,” they added.
Sednaya is a large military prison on the outskirts Damascus where the Syrian government detained thousands.
Syrian rebels announced they gained full control over the key city of Homs early on Sunday after only a day of fighting, leaving President Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule dangling by a thread as insurgents marched on Damascus.
