Environmental Protection AgencyThousands of Syrians took to the streets of the capital, Damascus, and other cities to celebrate the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
In Damascus, people gathered at the famous Umayyad Mosque to pray before jubilant marches called by the Islamist rebels who led the armed uprising against Assad.
Opposition leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani, who has now begun using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, had urged Syrians to “take to the streets to express their joy” on Friday to mark the “victory of the blessed revolution.”
Assad fled to Russia on Sunday as the regime founded by his father 50 years ago collapsed within a few turbulent days.
Umayyad Square in Damascus had a festive atmosphere. Loudspeakers were installed, and the music “Raise your head high, you are Syrian” played.
People waved the Syrian opposition flag and chanted revolutionary songs and slogans.
Among them were men dressed in black combat gear, wearing body armor and carrying weapons.
They were members of the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham rebel group.
Some stopped to take pictures with civilians. One of them took out a piece of paper and began reading the poetry he had written in praise of the country.
Sarah Al-Zoubi, a university student who lives in Damascus but is originally from Daraa – a city that the opposition considers the cradle of the revolution – said Syrians gathered to celebrate on Friday and would begin building the future “hand in hand.”
Nour Dhi Al-Ghana, another participant, said: “We are meeting because we are happy to liberate Syria, and we are happy to be liberated from the prison in which we were living.”
Aside from the celebrations, bereaved families went to search for the bodies of their members who disappeared over the past decade in the notorious Assad regime prisons.
In a morgue in central Damascus, some people held up pictures of their relatives, trying to compare them with the bodies thrown in bags in front of them.
Some were able to locate their missing fathers, brothers or sons, while others left sobbing after failing to find any clues.
The morgue was full of bodies transferred from Saydnaya prison, widely known here as a human slaughterhouse.
Aslan Ibrahim, a forensic expert at the hospital, said: “All the bodies had clear signs of malnutrition and were very thin.”
He added that the journalist's body bore signs of torture, adding that “his arm and leg were broken as well, and he also suffered from many bruises.”
The main locations of the sprawling network of intelligence agencies that have tried for decades to brutally crush opposition movements can be found along the same central streets of the Syrian capital.
In the basement of the State Security headquarters, in the Kafr Sousse district of the city, stand row after row of small cells – each no more than two meters by one metre, protected by thick steel doors.
Inside, there are dark spots marking the dirty walls. Detainees can be held in these cells for months while being interrogated and tortured.
They are located just below street level, on a busy road, where thousands of ordinary Syrians pass every day, going about their daily lives just meters from where their compatriots are detained and tortured.
A short distance away is the General Intelligence Directorate, another part of the network of former Syrian spy agencies.
There are a huge number of records, which are evidence of how the Assad regime monitors its citizens.
There are row after row of paper files in cabinets, and in some rooms, stacks of notebooks stacked floor to ceiling.
Near the computer server room. The floors and walls are pure black and white data storage units humming softly.
Power was cut off to much of Damascus but it appears that this facility was so important that it had its own power source.
