From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. It's like coming up for air after fifty years. That's the way one man described this moment in Syria. Since the fall of President Bashah Alasad, Syrians are celebrating. Some have wandered through Assad's deserted palace, Thousands are in the streets. Many more are searching the massive network of prisons that under pinned Assad's repressive regime. They're looking for loved ones, hoping they're still alive and if not, that they might
finally get closure. Today journalist to Heidi pet on the ground in Damascus as the Syrian people reckon with what the future holds for their country now that a sard is gone. It's Thursday, December nineteenth. Hattie, Hello, it's great to have you back on the show.
It's nice to be back.
So you're in Damascus right now, and you've been there since just after Bashah al Asad fled the country and the regime fell. Tell me what it's like to be in Syria at this moment of change.
The energy in Damascus is kind of incredible because it's this real mix of elation, relief, but also a real sense of grief and anger and all of that is kind of mixed together in the streets. There've been a number of large demonstrations and gatherings over the last week that I've been here. It's only just sinking in for many people here that you know, more than fifty years of the outside regime is over, and that they can
finally speak about what happened. You know, for so many people talking about their father that was in prison, or what happened to them in prison, or you know, the bombing of their neighborhoods by their own government. Breathing a whisper of that would have got them detained and probably killed. And so it's incredible to be somewhere where people are just so desperate and happy and relieved to be able to talk freely for the first time in decades.
Yeah, we're learning a lot of things that had been hidden, particularly about the prison system. There were rumors for a long time about the prisons being used by the regime, about torture and terror, but we didn't know the extent of what was actually happening until now. So tell me what's coming to light. What are we learning.
So one of the first places that people went when the regime fell was this prison outside of Damascus called Sednaya. There is a huge network of prisons across the country. They're in the basements of laundromats, there in every single courtroom, police station, underneath the radio and television building. The extent and the scale of the security state here is becoming clear, but said Naya is one of the largest and most
infamous of Assad's prisons. When the HDS fighters swept through and they unlocked the doors of prisons all around the country, this rumor spread that there were secret underground cells. You know. There were these incredible scenes of people showing up, jack hammering, digging up the floors, and there was this real sense of this last expression of hope for families that people that they might not have seen in ten years may still somehow be alive.
Okay, she was there. She don't have anybody to ask him until now, only she sears on the paper if she find anything for him.
So on Wednesday, when I arrived here in Syria, Said Noah was one of the first places I went, and families were still showing up. There were people camped outside, you know, sleeping in the in the prison grounds.
She hoped for maybe here, maybe a place she hoped she's not one hundred percent is here or where he is.
And over the course of about a day it became clear that there were no underground cells. And a Syrian human rights activist who has done a great deal of work on this, gave this incredibly tearful, actually interview on television where he said he was like, I hate to break it to the family, but the more than one hundred thousand missing, they're not here. They're probably dead and.
And are.
But that hadn't stopped people from showing up, clutching onto the last straws of hope that someone's father, their brother, their you know, their mother, their son, that there might be some scrap of information basically about what happened to them.
And I mean, some people obviously would be able to get that information about their family members and maybe, you know, in the best possible scenarios, be reunited. But what about those who actually don't find anything in the prisons and will never have a body to bury. What does closure look like for them?
So for many of the families, first they went to the prisons and they hoped that they would find their family members alive, and then news broke that a number of bodies from the prisons, mostly from Said Naya, had been brought to the main hospital in Damascus. The families who had been to the prisons and not found their loved ones alive there then came to the hospital, hoping at least that they could identify them among the dead and that that would be some form of closure, that
at least they would have a body to bury. But there are one hundred thousand missing in Syria and this main hospital in Damascus they had thirty five bodies. How many families have come through here hoping to identify their loved one who's missing.
No kids, I'm not a.
Thousands.
One of the bodies that had been brought to this hospital was of a very famous Syrian activist. His name was Mazan al Hamada, and he was one of the first to speak out about what in Said Naya, the torture that he experienced, the torture that he saw and witnessed. He returned to Syria in twenty twenty and he immediately disappeared back into the detention apparatus until his body was found at the military hospital, and so there was a
funeral for him on Thursday, which became incredibly symbolic. It became a funeral for all the missing, all the people whose families don't have a body to bury and maybe never will. You know, As his coffin was carried through the streets of Damascus, there was a huge crowd chanting
his name and carrying photographs of him. But not just him, they were carrying photographs of other missing public figures, so other activists and writers, but also their own family members, And it became a real moment of collective grief and mourning, but also genuinely real happiness and relief. This security apparatus and this repression of the Syrian people goes back to you know, well before Bashar Alisad. It goes back to
his father Hafez in more than five decades. And so the sense that people have is one person explained it to me, is it's like we've been living underground and we have finally come up for air.
After the break the drug operations that funded the Assad regime. So hai to, you're in Damascus right now and it's been less than two weeks since Bashah Alasad fled and now the rebel's over through his government they're picking through the remains of the regime. We know that the terrors of the prison system are being revealed, but what else are we learning about Syria under Bashah Alasad.
So in recent years, Syria has actually been described as a narco state, which you would ordinarily think of as places in South and Central America that have relied on, you know, the cocaine and now increasingly the fentanyl trade. But Syria actually was an enormous producer and exporter of a drug called captigon. It's an amphetamine. It's very popular across the Middle East. It's sometimes used by fighters to sort of keep them awake and focused in battle, but
it's also used as a party drug. So I went to a factory where this drug was being produced just outside Damascus, just in the you know, in the hills outside Duma. It used to be a potato chip factory. It's called Captain Corn and there's this jingle, you know, all the kids know this jingle for Captain Corn. And it was turned into a drug production facility. And so when when I got there, this smell was just incredible because the regime had had set fire to the factory
just before they left. But what was particularly interesting is the evidence of how they were transported and secretly exported around the Middle East. So in this particular factory, one of the main ways was the pills had been disguised inside parts for generators. There were also fake fruits filled with pills as well. You know, these pills inside Syria they're very cheap, but in places like Jordan and Saudi Arabia they go for twenty five US dollars a pill.
And you know, just in this one factory that we saw it would be making millions for the regime.
Right, So, Hadi, what's going to happen to all of these factories, to this entire kind of clandestine operation that the regime ran now and all of the drugs that have been left behind.
Well at the moment, and this is the huge challenge for Syria, and you know for the new government of Syria, is that the advanced by HTS and the other associated rebel groups happened so quickly. You know, soldiers from the regime just melted away. I mean on the drive in
from Beirut to Damascus, there was no border control. You know, I have no Syrian stamp in my passport because there was nobody at the border and by the side of the road there is just discarded army uniforms where people soldiers had clearly taken them off, changed into civilian clothes
and fled. So what's happened is that either local fighters from groups like Josha Islam or other rebel groups, or fighters from HTS are now taking up you know, these kind of physicians and beginning to guard these facilities and make some attempt to secure them.
Yeah, and it sounds like HTS itself was taken by surprise at how quick their success was. So what have they been doing for the last sort of week or so? How are they preparing to govern?
One of the first big challenges actually will be the economy here. Syria has been under sanctions for an incredibly long time in an attempt to, you know, to put pressure on the regime. It's now being governed by HTS, who there's still a prescribed terrorist organization, you know, the UK, the EU, and the US all still designate it as a terrorist organization. What's interesting is that the UK and the US have publicly said in the last few days that they have had meetings with HDS, which you would
ordinarily not with a terrorist organization. You know that they have also said it's too early to start talking about lifting sanctions. There's been a very concerted effort by HDS and particularly by its leader Jilani to reassure the international community that yes, HDS had its roots in al Qaeda, but they split from them a very long time ago, that they intend to form a sort of civil government. But it's not just the international community that is waiting
to see what will happen here. There is a sense of trepidation, you know, from some minorities, from Alohites, from Christians, waiting to see whether these assurances that they've received from HTS will be born out. But time will tell over the next couple of months really about exactly how they govern.
It sounds like a country kind of holding its breath, waiting to see if this change will bring stability and a chance to put the trauma of the Assad regime behind it.
Yeah, And I mean, you know, that's one of the things that one of the people that I met at Musen's funeral, Muhmood, is you know, one of these old political activists and writers who you know, they've been around the block, they've experienced the false promise of Bashah the Sun. You know, when he first came to power, he said that he was going to make changes, he was going to open things up. That turned out to be a lie. He turned out to be more brutal than his father.
Mahmood said to me, well, you know, we're incredibly happy right now, and we deserve as well time to be happy. There is this pushback, in fact, by some Serians, of this kind of finger wagging by the international community of like, oh, this may not actually be the good news story we think it is. And we have to remember that, you know,
these rebels, their roots and al Qaeda and everything. And there is a bit of a sense from some Syrians of like, can we just have five minutes to celebrate the fact that a five decade regime that imprisoned, you know, tortured forcibly, disappeared, murdered and buried in mass graves our friends and family members. Can we just have five minutes please,
to celebrate the fact that that has ended. But Mahmoud, he was very keen to impress upon me that the thing you have to understand is that we are only half the way there, and the next twelve months will be critical.
Hattie, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks for having me.
Also in the news today, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has unveiled his mid year budget update, showing Australia as expected to slip deeper into deficit over the next four years due to growing spending and falling tax The expected deficit for the current financial year twenty twenty four to twenty five is twenty six point nine billion, which is set to widen to thirty one point seven billion by the financial year twenty twenty seven twenty eight and New York prosecutors
say Luigi Mangioni, the man accused of shooting United Health Group CEO Brian Thompson, has been charged with murder. Mangioni was indicted on eleven counts, including first degree murder and murder as a crime of terrorism. The indictment accusing Mangioni of murdering Thompson with the intent to influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion. Mangioni is being held on gun charges in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Thanks for listening.