White Helmets pledges to hold Assad accountable for “his crimes”

In a video posted on X, Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets, addressed the victims’ families and survivors outside the Palace of Justice in Damascus, reiterating his commitment to justice.

“Today, I promise you from in front of the Palace of Justice, not from anywhere else, to work with all legal institutions to hold the head of the regime accountable after all these violations,” Saleh declared.

Assad, now in Russia after fleeing Syria amid advancing opposition forces, has faced widespread condemnation for his government’s brutal actions.

A week after al-Assad’s government was overthrown, one of Syria’s top human rights workers has a sobering message: 100,000 missing people are almost certainly dead.

Fadel Abdulghany, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), has been working for years with a team of 21 people within Syria to record everyone who was captured or simply vanished without a trace.

As rebel forces bore down on Damascus, seizing city after city, the SNHR visited every prison and detention centre as they fell, documenting as many detainees freed from their cells as they could.

“Our records show that approximately 136,000 people were either being arrested or had been forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime,” Abdulghany told Middle East Eye.

The figure includes more than 5,000 children.

“But we have only recorded a maximum estimate of 31,000 people released over the past few days.”

The only conclusion, Abdulghany believes, is that most were killed under torture.

“There is no secret detention centre to be discovered. There are no secret floors under prisons, or heavy doors that haven’t been opened,” he said, adding, “When people share false information, it plays with the families of the victims.”

Sednaya, Syria’s most infamous prison, had a capacity of 10,000 people, Abdulghany stated.

“But approximately 1,600 prisoners were released,” he noted, far fewer than has been reported on social media, where many Syrians get their news.

The main commander of the Syrian fighters who toppled al-Assad has warned that anyone involved in the torture or killing of prisoners during the deposed president’s rule would be hunted down and pardons were out of the question.

“We will pursue them in Syria, and we ask countries to hand over those who fled so we can achieve justice,” Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani, said in a statement published on the Syrian state TV’s Telegram channel on Wednesday.

His comments came after thousands of detainees were released and families hoped to find others who disappeared in the country’s notorious jails, including the Sednaya Prison.

He urged countries “to hand over any of those criminals who may have fled so they can be brought to justice”.