Syrians search Sednaya prison for missing relatives

DAMASCUS, Dec 10 (Reuters): As families desperately scoured the filthy cells of Syria's forbidding Sednaya prison on Monday for any sign of long-detained relatives after its gates were flung open by rebels, hope for finding missing loved ones began to fade.

Thousands of prisoners spilled out of president Bashar al-Assad's pitiless detention system after he was toppled on Sunday, sometimes to tearful reunions with relatives who believed they had been executed years earlier.

But countless families were still trawling dark corridors and hidden cells in the labyrinthine complex for a trace of loved ones detained for attending protests, defying authorities or simply voicing discontent.

Ahmed Najjar had come to Damascus from Aleppo, hoping to find his brother's two children, seized by Assad's security forces in 2012. "We're looking. They're saying there's an underground prison," he said.

Rumours spread on Sunday that thousands more inmates were still imprisoned in underground cells that could not be reached. The White Helmets rescue organisation, which for years has dug through fallen buildings after air strikes, deployed a team.

"They had a map from a defected Syrian army officer and broke down one wall and found nothing," said one of the rescue workers. "They broke a second and found a door."

But by Monday afternoon there was no sign of more prisoners. Outside, Intsar al-Jaber sat waiting for news. The 45-year-old's brother and cousin were imprisoned in Sednaya but she had not been allowed to see them since 2014. "They told me then that my brother was dead and not to come back. [They said] 'Your brother is a terrorist, and he died, so there's nothing for you here. Don't come'." But she continued to wait and hope. At a mosque on the road to the prison, people were registering names and phone numbers in case imprisoned relatives were found. One woman said she had seen her son in a screenshot of released prisoners on Sunday.

Rights groups have reported mass executions in Syria's prisons, and the United States said in 2017 it had identified a new crematorium at Sednaya for hanged prisoners. Torture was widely documented.