BBC witnesses Saydnaya prison’s foul and pestilent atmosphere

Other parts of Assad’s prison system were less cruel. Phone calls home were allowed, and families were allowed to visit.

But Saydnaya was the dark and rotten heart of the regime. Fear of being consigned there and killed without anyone knowing what had happened was a central part of the Assad regime’s system of coercion and repression.

The authorities did not have to tell families who had been incarcerated there. Allowing them to fear the worst was another way of applying pressure. The regime kept its boot on the throat of Syrians because of the power, reach and savagery of its myriad and overlapping intelligence agencies, and because of the routine use of torture and execution.

I was in other infamous prisons in the days after they were liberated, including Abu Salim, the former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s notorious jail in Tripoli and Pul-e-Charki outside Kabul in Afghanistan.

Neither were as foul and pestilent as Saydnaya. In its overcrowded cells men had to urinate into plastic bags as their access to latrines was limited.

When the locks were smashed open, they left behind their filthy rags and scraps of blankets which were all they had to cover themselves as they slept on the floor. Torture and execution have already been documented in Saydnaya.

In the months to come it is certain that more information about the horrors perpetrated inside its walls will emerge from former inmates.

In Saydnaya’s corridors you can see how hard it will be to mend the country Assad broke to try to save his regime. Now that the prison has been broken open, like the country, it has become a microcosm of all the challenges Syria faces since the Assad regime crumpled and was swept away.