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No detainees remain alive in the infamous prisons of Bashar al-Assad's regime apart from those freed on 8 and 9 December, sources confirmed to °®Âþµº's Arabic language sister siteÌýÌýon Wednesday.

Syrian sources said that "mass graves" near Saydnaya prison and Najha cemetery were discovered in the Damascus countryside, as well as others near former battle zones, believed to hold the bodies of the disappeared.

These burial sites were part of the Assad regime's mass executions and deliberate extermination of detainees.ÌýAccording to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 100,000 people died in Syria's jails and detention centres from 2011.

Assad's regime involved not only the military and security services in these humanitarian crimes but also local collaborators, creating a web of complicity designed to ensure loyalty.

But one source suggested military judiciary records still hold crucial details about the victims.

The path to death in Assad's prisons

The journey into Assad's detention centres was marked by arrests carried out by military or security authorities - or sometimes even Shabiha, pro-regime militias.

Suspects were handed over to the military judiciary, where swift trials under terrorism charges end with death or life imprisonment.

Under the regime, extortion was rampant, with families paying exorbitant bribes to commute death sentences or reduce prison terms. Once sentenced, detainees were transferred to overcrowded and unsanitary prisons facing torture, malnutrition, and lack of medical care.

Thousands of Syrians died in custody, often in facilities like the military security prison led by Major General Rafiq Shehadeh, where mortality rates were alarmingly high.

During the 2018 siege of Damascus by Jaysh al-Islam, 25,000 detainees were transferred from Adra prison to various security branches, leading to a significant spike in deaths. Ìý

Following the fall of the Assad regime, the detention centres that were left behind revealed a grim landscape of systemic extortion, torture, and extermination.

As Syrians continue to hold vigils and search for their loved ones, revelations of mass graves and systemic killings have added urgency to calls for accountability.

According to a US-based Syrian advocacy organisation, a mass grave outside ofÌýDamascusÌýcontained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the ousted government.

On Tuesday, the UN investigative body previously toldÌýSyria's new authoritiesÌýtheir intention to travel to Syria to secure evidence that could implicate top officials of the former government.