CNN goes inside Syria’s ‘slaughterhouse’ prison as desperate families look for missing loved ones

As Syrians rejoiced across the country this week, many began the frantic search for missing loved ones who had been forcibly disappeared under Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship.

Crowds have descended on the notorious Saydnaya prison, which had become synonymous with arbitrary detention, torture and murder. Under the glaring sun, people poured toward the notorious facility north of Damascus, as traffic stretched for miles and some left their cars to walk the last stretch uphill, past barbed wire fences and watchtowers.

Just as Assad’s palaces revealed the extent of the family’s opulent wealth and luxurious lifestyle, his prisons have confirmed horrors that Syrians have known all too well over the past five decades.

The Assad regime’s notorious detention facilities were black holes where, as far back as the 1970s, anyone deemed an opponent disappeared. Saydnaya was one of the most infamous sites, known as “the slaughterhouse” – where as many as 13,000 people were hanged between 2011 and 2015, according to Amnesty International.

Unsurprisingly, it was one of the first locations rebels focused on as they swept toward Damascus in a lightning offensive.