Syrian missing detained family says ‘hearts suspended between hope and despair’

A Syrian lady whose grandfather, father and two brothers have been detained by the navy practically 12 years in the past has instructed the BBC it’s “devastating” that her family members stay lacking, regardless of the nation’s most infamous jail being emptied.

“Now, miles away from that most brutal prison, we are huddling around screens, our hearts suspended between hope and despair,” Hiba Abdulhakim Qasawaad, a 24-year-old from town of Homs, instructed BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We are scanning every face in the footage, searching for traces of our loved ones. This is the only thing that we can do.”

On Sunday, when insurgent forces swept into the nation’s capital and declared an finish to Bashar al-Assad’s rule, households rushed to Saydnaya Prison exterior Damascus, the place political opponents have been reportedly held, tortured and executed.

But with rescue employees now ending their seek for attainable detainees within the jail, some households face renewed anguish.

“Now freedom rings like a bell too loud for ears accustomed to silence,” Ms Qasawaad stated.

“Now, our hearts racing, we have this anticipation, joy and pain as we await the moment when we can finally embrace them, free at last, but I don’t know if we can see them again, because now we are torn between finding answers or never knowing at all.”

Ms Qasawaad was 12 years outdated when she witnessed troopers drag the males in her household out of their dwelling in the midst of the night time on 28 January 2013. They have been amongst 48 members of her household seized in a raid, she stated.

Another of her brothers had already been killed combating Assad’s military in 2012, she stated, throughout a civil struggle that broke out after the Arab Spring protests in 2011.

“No words can describe the overwhelming anguish that consumed us at that time,” she stated.

She has not seen her male relations since then – however launched prisoners stated they heard their names from inside Saydnaya, she stated.

Her grandfather, who was born in 1939, would now be aged, whereas her father was born in 1962, and her brothers in 1989 and 1994.

Ms Qasawaad stated that after the autumn of Assad’s rule and the liberation of prisoners, her household is feeling “a mixture between laughter and tears”.

“We don’t know what will happen next, all we can do is keep searching,” she stated. “We hope we have this spark of happiness again in our lives, because it was swept away with the day that they have taken them.”