A 57-year-old Syrian man who ‘vanished’ after his arrest by al-Assad thugs as a teenager has been spotted by stunned relatives looking dazed outside a prison after he was freed after four decades.
In 1986, Syrian soldiers arrested 18-year-old university student Ali Hassan al-Ali in north Lebanon and his family hadn’t seen or heard from him in over four decades.
But on Thursday, his younger brother Moammar Ali had the greatest surprise of his life as – after 39 years of searching – he found Ali.
His phone exploded with texts and calls as people sent him a photo of a man in his late 50s standing outside the Hama central prison in north Syria.
His friends said the man looked like Moammar and he realised ‘this is my brother’.
He said: ‘He has come out of prison as an old man.’
Moammar was just one of thousands of people finally released from prison after decades of being locked up.
Rebels liberated inmates from prisons in Aleppo and Hama after they took control and toppled deposed President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Speaking to The Guardian, Moammar said: ‘There was no place in Syria we didn’t visit. We went around the whole country asking what happened to him. One day they would admit they had him in prison, the next day they would deny it.’
The last information he received was that he was being held on charges of political agitation.
But he will now finally be reunited with his brother – who is now 57.
However the fast-changing political dynamics means it is hard for authorities to identify who has been released.
Ali hasn’t been able to speak to his lost brother yet, and has spent the last day trying to track down who took the photo of him.
He added: ‘When he comes home, we will have a big celebration. But until I smell him, until I can say, ‘Here he is, my brother,’ nothing counts.’
Last night, rescuers were battling to liberate Syria’s alleged hellhole the ‘Red Prison’, but rebels who freed caged women and children reportedly still can’t access the men trapped.
Saydnayah Prison near Damascus – nicknamed the ‘Human Slaughterhouse – is said to contain ‘highly secured underground’ cells in its Red Building.
Unverified footage reportedly shows rebels ‘opening cells one by one’ by breaking down walls, and they are said to have rescued ‘hundreds of inmates, including women and young children’.
But there are men trapped in cells three floors underground in a section named the ‘Red Prison’, some have said.
President Bashar al-Assad’s military prison, dubbed the ‘industrial torture chamber’, has reportedly seen between 5,000 to 13,000 inmates hanged since 2011, according to AlJazeera.
Heartbreaking video showed a toddler walking out of the unlocked cell doors looking confused as rebel soldiers shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ – meaning ‘God is greatest’ – as they free hundreds of inmates.
It comes as an alleged Russian plot to spread fake news of an al-Assad ‘plane crash’ has been uncovered.
The Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine posted on X to claim Russia ‘covered their trail’ of helping al-Assad escape by spreading false reports that he died in a crash.
One man freed from the prison wasn’t able to speak when people asked him who he was.
Militants frantically cut through padlocks on jail cell doors at Saydnaya prison to free hundreds of female prisoners and their youngsters after al-Assad’s brutal regime was toppled.
In a video posted on X women yelped joyfully as they were freed where some had been incarcerated for decades. They were boarded onto buses waiting outside the prison before being taken to their homes.
The rebels who were filmed releasing inmates at the Syrian prison said: ‘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 Saydnaya prison.’
Omar Saoud, a local activist, said in a video: ‘Three floors underground, there is a prison known as the red prison, it has not yet been opened.
‘They are not being able to open it because it requires a certain mechanism, and the soldiers and officers who used to be here have left.’
Amnesty International research said the Syrian authorities had committed crimes against humanity with thousands of inmates in the prison 30km north of Damascus being murdered, tortured, and exterminated.
They determined that the violations committed at the brutal facilities over the last decade under dictator’s Bashar al Assad regime, which has seen over 10,000 political detainees vanish, was part of an attack against civilians.
The release of thousands of prisoners has renewed hope for families who have heard nothing about their loved ones for years.
Screenshots of released inmates have circulated on WhatsApp groups around Syria as relatives strain to try and identify familiar faces.