Name: His Son Vanished Into Syria’s Deadly Prisons. 12 Years Later, He Finds a Clue.
Uploaded: 2025-03-26T04:01:00Z
Duration: 12 min 2 s
Description: A Syrian man holds out hope that videos show his son fleeing Saydnaya prison after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The Journal joins the father’s search for more clues about his fate.

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A Syrian man holds out hope that videos show his son fleeing Saydnaya prison after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The Journal joins the father’s search for more clues about his fate. Photo: Ben C. Solomon

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250325/e2874026-2f13-449b-adf1-06a490a7744c/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

A Syrian man holds out hope that videos show his son fleeing Saydnaya prison after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The Journal joins the father’s search for more clues about his fate.

His Son Vanished Into Syria’s Deadly Prisons. 12 Years Later, He Finds a Clue.

Ben: In December, 2024, after 50 years of rule, the Assad dictatorship fell. Syria was thrown into chaos. Decades of repression lifted. The regime's prisons were suddenly opened and the internet was flooded with videos of people long feared dead now walking free.

Reporter: Images surfaced of prisoners being released from the notorious Saydnay Prison dubbed the Human Slaughterhouse.

Person: The human slaughterhouse.

Person: Slaughterhouse.

Reporter: And now we're seeing families streaming in, trying to find answers.

Person: Thousands of them are looking for their beloved ones.

Speaker: For Suleiman al-Youssef, one video changed everything.

Ben: Suleiman has had no word from his son since his arrest 12 years ago. Now, on the dawn of a new Syria, a father sets out to finally find his son.

Ben: This brief and grainy clip was taken just outside of Saydnaya the night the prison opened up.

Ben: Another clip from the following day shows the same man at a square in Central Damascus. These small clips are Suleiman's only clues. He heads to where the video was taken to find answers.

Ben: Shadi was born and raised in Duma, a working class suburb north of Damascus. In 2011, Shadi was fresh out of compulsory military service and was working in his uncle's shop, when the Arab Spring started making headlines around the world.

Reporter: They call it the Arab Spring, the revolutions that have swept the middle anti-government, pro-democracy protests have now spread to Syria.

Reporter: Dozens of people have been taken to the speech.

Ben: Duma was one of the first strongholds in the anti-Assad movement. Across the country, the Syrian government's response was brutal.

Reporter: In Syria, the government has stepped up its repression of the protest.

Reporter: Thousands of protesters in Syria have been arrested.

Reporter: Hundreds of unarmed protesters have been killed in recent days.

Ben: What started as a series of protests quickly became a civil war.

Videographer: Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!

Ben: Shadi's family says he wasn't a revolutionary, but security forces were arresting men indiscriminately.

Ben: Shadi vanished into serious vast network of prisons and secret detention sites. Here, the Assad regime would torture, execute, and disappear its own people. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, over 1.2 million people were detained by the regime since 2011, and over 100,000 are still missing. But on the night of December 8th, 2024, when Saydnaya opened up, only 1,500 people came out. Thousands of families like Suleiman's pinned their hopes on these faces. In online forms, dozens of people posted this same photo of the same man, hoping it's their relative.

Ben: As more time passes after the regime's fall, the number of families being reunited with the missing is less each day.

Ben: Our team also kept looking for the man in the video.

Ben: After weeks of searching, we found him.

Ben: The man asked not to be identified, but he agreed to speak with Suliman.

Ben: He was not Suleiman's son.