Outside Syria's notorious Saydnaya prison, relatives leaf desperately through abandoned ledgers looking for news of the missing, clinging to the dream of seeing missing sons, husbands and sisters again. Desperate Syrians say they were systematically shaken down for bribes to receive news of detainees that together amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's vast network of prisons was not simply a tool of his brutal crackdown on opposition to his rule, it was a money-making machine for his supporters.
Ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's vast network of prisons was not simply a tool of his brutal crackdown on opposition to his rule, it was a money-making machine for his supporters.
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00:00My brother is missing since 2011.
00:07He was in the hospital when the bomb exploded.
00:14He was in the hospital when the bomb exploded.
00:21He was in the hospital when the bomb exploded.
00:28My brother is missing since 2011.
00:33We don't know his name.
00:38We searched all over Aleppo.
00:43We searched all over Aleppo.
00:58We searched all over Aleppo.
01:03We paid each and every lawyer to get us to him.
01:08We paid each and every lawyer to get us to him.
01:13They took a lot of money from us.
01:18They took a lot of money from us.
01:23They told us that they will be here today and tomorrow.
01:26They told us their names.
01:28I don't know who they are.
01:30We don't know anything about them.
01:46We don't want our children.
01:48They are good people, dead, burned,
01:51and buried together.
01:54They told us.