°®Âþµº

Like pilgrims, they marched in single file up the arid hillside to Saydnaya. And it was wise to stick to the newly furrowed path: rusted signs warned that a minefield lay nearby.Ìý

The families of the prisoners had come from every corner of Syria to Assad’s prison some 20 kilometres north of Damascus, which had been protected like a fortress, and had now become a temple of the missing.ÌýÌýÌý

On Tuesday, there were still thousands of people waiting there to find out what had become of their loved ones. Most of them had been there for three days, since rebel fighters forced the prison’s gates open after the fall of the Assad regime on Sunday morning.ÌýÌý

In Damascus too, families refuse to give up hope, insisting on finding their loved ones alive. Others just want closure, a name and a date that would indicate where their relative had been sent and what had become of them.ÌýÌý

This week, crowds gathered in the street outside Damascus Hospital, where staff had pasted pictures of 35 bodies believed to have been tortured to death in Saydnaya.ÌýÌý

Others are scouring social media, or meeting daily at Damascus's squares and transport hubs, showing passersby a grainy photo followed by the sentence that always begins the same way: "Have you seen my...?"

In Saydnaya’s courtyard, a throng of desperate parents, sons, wives and friends clamoured at a man holding a list of names that had been found among the sea of paperwork that had flooded the prison.Ìý

There was talk of hidden doors and corridors that would lead to thousands of prisoners still alive underground, and a frenzied race to find them before they ran out of air after the electricity cut out.ÌýÌý

Everywhere the place was pockmarked with crude holes in the concrete left by another rescue attempt in vain.ÌýÌý

In the gloom of Saydnaya’s kitchens, Mohammed al-Shami, a rebel fighter from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was helping to coordinate the search.ÌýÌý

He hailed from Eastern Ghouta, the suburb of Damascus which saw heavy fighting during the civil war and was besieged by Assad for years while he bombed its people with chemical weapons.ÌýÌýÌý

Mohammed was forced to live in Aleppo for the past eight years until he fought his way back home as part of the rebel advance that toppled the Assad regime. His first stop was Saydnaya to free the prisoners.Ìý

"They didn’t look like they were alive anymore, they were no longer human," Mohammed told °®Âþµº.ÌýÌý

He said a former prison officer told him there were still at least 2,000 detainees being held in secret chambers underground and Mohammed feared they would be running out of oxygen.ÌýÌý

"We are also suffocating today," he said. "Their souls are in our hands, so we need to get them out of the ground."

For Mohammed, the search for the prisoners was also a personal one.ÌýÌýÌý

"My brother was imprisoned here for six years. For six years we don’t know anything about him, he has three children who are waiting," he choked up and composed himself before finishing his sentence. "Every day they wait for him to come back."

Only around 300 prisoners have been freed from SaydnayaÌýsince Sunday,Ìýbut an official prison document shown to °®Âþµº by Moumen al-Karkoukly of the Syrian Red Crescent stated that on 28 September there were still 4,259 detainees being held there.

This document, combined with rapidly spreading rumours, led many to believe there must be thousands still alive somewhere in its dungeons.ÌýÌý

On Monday, Syria’s Civil Defence teams, the White Helmets, called off the search after failing to find any evidence of underground cells, concluding these did not exist.ÌýÌý

But the prisoners’ families could not accept that this was true: they hammered the concrete, lifted paving slabs, and dug the earth with their bare hands.ÌýÌý

Ahmed Al-Muhammed, once an inmate himself, came back to find his brother Annas. He had once been offered his brother's release for the price of 1 billion Syrian pounds (about $70,000), an impossible price for Ahmed, who last heard news of Annas two months ago.ÌýÌý

In a dank cell littered with rags, a group gathered round him to ask if he had seen their relatives, as he described what life in Saydnaya was like.ÌýÌý

"The worst thing was the torture," he said. "We couldn't think about anything except eating. We couldn't even think about leaving the prison.Ìý

“We would be up at about 5am, otherwise we would be tortured. We would guess the time from hearing activity in the prison, from when the food came. When they opened the doors, we would have to cover our eyes with our hands, or we would be punished. We were not even allowed to talk. In each cell there was a camera watching us."

Outside on some scrubland surrounded by barbed wire, dozens of families rested on blankets and waited. Saad al-Khalaf had travelled from a village near Al-Bukamal on the Syria-Iraq border.ÌýÌý

Saad said that in 2017, Iran-aligned militias rounded up 170 men from his village who looked like opposition fighters and handed them over to the Syrian regime. His brother was one of them, eventually taken to Saydnaya.ÌýÌý

Saad was told by prison officials that his brother was still there and was due at a court hearing in September, but has heard nothing since.ÌýÌý

"There were tragedies that took place here, but we don’t want massacres [in retribution]. The people in charge of the prison need to come to justice, the people who gave the orders," Saad said.ÌýÌý

There were others who had travelled far looking for answers. Abd al-Karim Aboud had come from Deir az-Zour in northeastern Syria, over 400 kilometres away.ÌýÌý

His brother, who had once served in an opposition group under the Free Syrian Army, was taken five years ago from his hotel room in Damascus on charges of "terrorism".ÌýÌý

Abd al-Karim tried to visit his brother at Saydnaya in 2023 but was told he had been moved to another branch.

"Whoever enters Saydnaya doesn't come out," Abd al-Karim said. "We will wait here until we know whether he’s dead or alive. We just want to know."

°®Âþµº spoke with 11 people who were looking for their loved ones; each had equally tragic stories to tell.ÌýÌý

Moumen from the Syrian Red Crescent said that after halting the search his organisation was coordinating with the International Committee of the Red Cross to reconnect the approximately 300 prisoners released from Saydnaya with their families.ÌýÌý

But the psychological trauma that prisoners likely suffered in detention has presented additional challenges to Moumen and his teams. "Some of them forgot their names, forgot even where their houses were," he said.ÌýÌý

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights there are some 100,000 prisoners missing across Syria’s vast network of prisons and detention centres, and it is likely that all of them "died under torture" in detention. The locations of the mass graves that hold them may never be discovered.Ìý

As the light began to fade at Saydnaya, Abd al-Karim gave up the wait for the day. He would be back the following morning, and the next, until he is certain his brother is not there.ÌýÌý

"After they make sure there’s no one still here, they need to raze the prison to the ground," he said.ÌýÌý