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Syria rebel leader discusses 'transfer of power' after Assad's fall
Assad fled Syria as the Islamist-led rebels swept into the capital, bringing a spectacular end on Sunday to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.
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People celebrate at Umayyad Square in Damascus on December 8, 2024. Celebrations erupted around Syria and crowds ransacked President Bashar al-Assad's luxurious home on December 8 after Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus and declared he had fled the country, in a spectacular end to five decades of Baath party rule. (AFP/ Al Kassem)
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yria's Islamist rebel leader on Monday began discussions on transferring power, a day after his opposition alliance dramatically unseated president Bashar al-Assad following decades of brutal rule.
Assad fled Syria as the Islamist-led rebels swept into the capital, bringing a spectacular end on Sunday to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.
He oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 500,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes, millions of them finding refuge abroad.
Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, met with outgoing prime minister Mohammed al-Jalali "to coordinate a transfer of power that guarantees the provision of services" to Syria's people, said a statement posted on the rebels' Telegram channels.
At the core of the system of rule that Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent by those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party's line.
Thousands of Syrians gathered on Monday outside a jail synonymous with the worst atrocities of Assad's rule to search for relatives, many of whom have spent years in the Saydnaya facility outside Damascus, AFP correspondents said.
Rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets group had earlier said they were looking for potential secret doors or basements in Saydnaya.
"I ran like crazy" to get to the prison, said Aida Taha, 65, searching for her brother who was arrested in 2012.
"But I found out that some of the prisoners were still in the basements. There are three or four floors underground."
Crowds of freed prisoners wandered the streets of Damascus distinguishable by the marks of their ordeal: maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger.
Sharaa, the rebel leader, said Tuesday that the incoming authorities would pursue former senior officials responsible for torture and other abuses, saying they "will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people".
While Syria had been at war for over 13 years, the government's collapse came in a matter of days in a lightning offensive led by Sharaa's Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
