With al-Assad Gone, Syrians Search Prisons for Traces of Their Loved Ones

Her brother was pulled from his car at a military checkpoint nearly a decade ago, her brother-in-law dragged from his house by the police. Two of her cousins were arrested near the airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus. She said she never had heard from any of them again.

So after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, Ghusun Juma, 35, began a quest for answers that led her to an underground prison in one of Syria’s most notorious detention centers, a drab collection of buildings in southeastern Damascus.

“I am looking to see if there is anything that belonged to my brother, his ID card, or something with his name on it,” she said, guiding herself through a dark, dank cell block with a cellphone flashlight. “I have been looking since the first day, but I haven’t found anything anywhere.”

Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, and his troops’ abandonment of their bases as rebels stormed through Damascus, has exposed the black boxes of one of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes. While some Syrians have wandered through his luxurious palace, many more have combed through the vast network of detention centers whose repression helped keep him in power.

An untold number of Syrians disappeared into the maw of that security apparatus over the decades. As the rebels broke into prisons and freed prisoners over the last few weeks, many Syrians hoped that their missing relatives would soon return home.