Family members and hostage aid groups are are taking the search to look for missing journalist Austin Tice to Damascus as President Bashar al-Assad’s long rule in Syria has ended. They are searching for the American in abandoned prisons.
The dictator in Syria has fallen,but it is still unknown what the new government will look like.Heather Murdock visits the country’s key minority groups, asking what they hope for and what they fear from the new leadership.
It is known as “poor man’s cocaine.” A major moneymaker for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime was the illegal drug Captagon.State-run factories that produce the drug have been being dismantled by the rebels who overthrew him.
A glimpse of the brutality of Syria’s civil war might have been found in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, which is located outside of Damascus. Yarmouk, which had a population of over 150,000, was destroyed in the early years of the conflict.Now, many are returning to try to rebuild their devastated homes and their lives.
More than a million people have sought asylum in European countries over the past decade as they have fled the civil war in Syria.Now, with the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, some are controversially putting the brakes on new asylum requests.Also,Syrians in Europe are both jubilant and fearful about the future as a result of the rapid political changes.
Israel says its forces will not leave the Golan Heights border area until it is certain that the people living there will be safe. Israel has taken control of a buffer zone between Israel and Syria. The Druze, who make up half of these population, are concerned about what will happen to them and their families on the Syrian side of the border after Bashar al-Assad’s government’s fall.syria.
One of the last places that families look for signs of their lost loved ones is Sednaya jail, which is well-known for its history of torture and mass executions during the Assad a regime. When rebels freed thousands of prisoners following Bashar al-Assad’s departure, they discovered a sobering truth: bodies buried inside the premises, giving families hope but more frequent heartbreak.
Families are leaving behind tents in the countryside and their lives as refugees abroad to return to Aleppo,Syria’s second-largest city. However, some say they are not yet able to celebrate what they hope would be the end of the 13-year civil war in Syria.
The Sednaya Prison, infamously known to as “the human slaughterhouse,” was the destination of many Syrians seeking information about their missing loved ones following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Austin Tice disappeared in Syria twelve years ago, but his family has received evidence that he is still alive. The overthrow of President Bashar Assad’s government has renewed efforts to bring him home.