Under Bashar Assad, thousands disappeared into Syria's prison system. After a lightning rebel offensive toppled the regime, some Syrians were reunited with friends and family who had been detained for years.
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00:00A family reunited. Father, mother and son kept apart for years by a brutal regime. That
00:09brutality echoes here in their home in Damascus.
00:14I do not forgive the regime. Why would I forgive them? They treated us like animals. I hated
00:25going to visit my own son.
00:31When he called me so his father could pick him up, I couldn't believe it. They told me,
00:38it's your son, Ali. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that was really his voice.
00:45I couldn't.
00:53Bashar al-Assad's authorities arrested Ali for deserting the Syrian army, he tells us.
00:59They accused him of terrorism, he says, because he refused to attack fellow citizens.
01:08I couldn't do it. Syrians are my brothers. We're one people. The regime wanted me to
01:18stay with them and kill my people or be accused of what they accused me of. I left the regime
01:28when I saw what it was doing to the people. What did they do? They were asking for freedom.
01:37Some of the military shot back, some didn't. I left because they forced me to beat and
01:44arrest people. I didn't want to do that. My crime is that I walked away.
01:52For that, they sentenced Ali to 20 years in the notorious Sadnaya prison. He tells us
01:58they tortured him to the point where he wanted to die. When in December, rebels overthrew
02:06the Assad regime, they opened the prison and freed those inside.
02:13We heard the sound of gunfire. We thought the army had come in to kill us. We started
02:23hiding and moving away from the door. Suddenly the door opened. They said, God is great.
02:33Bashar al-Assad has fallen and you're free.
02:38Elsewhere in Damascus, at a hospital morgue, Syrians gather looking for traces of loved
02:43ones who will not come home.
02:47He was arrested in 2017 and hasn't appeared yet. When we asked about him, they say they
02:52don't have him. They don't tell us if he's in prison, nothing. We're waiting for him
02:56to come up.
02:59Mataz Adnan al-Qassar. This is the last photo of him. He got himself a passport and wanted
03:04to flee, but somebody reported him. Isn't it a shame? She was just 35, without children,
03:13no family.
03:15As Ali starts his new life in the new Syria, he knows that he's lucky. He says he wants
03:21justice for those who did not have his good fortune.