I have been covering the situation in Syria for years, from the beginning – when anti-regime protests began in March 2011.

We were in Daraa, southern Syria. It was a Friday and people called it “Day of Dignity.” They took to the streets to protest the killing of dozens of people at the hands of security forces in the previous days.

The demonstrations erupted due to the arrest and torture of children for spraying anti-Assad graffiti on the wall of their school.

It was almost unimaginable in Syria – a tightly controlled country where people are afraid to utter a word against the regime.

However, “enough is enough” is what I heard over and over again. Other words people kept repeating were “justice and freedom.” The Arab Spring has arrived in Syria.

Thirteen years later I found myself back in the Omari Mosque in Daraa, the epicenter of the protest movement – ​​where the euphoria was palpable. The system has collapsed. The Assad dynasty is over.

I couldn’t believe I was back.

The road to Damascus

December 8, 4 a.m.: We cut off our way from Beirut to the Masnaa border with Syria due to reports of the fall of Damascus. When we arrived at the crossing less than two hours later, we saw the Syrians celebrating the news. Some of them were preparing to return home.

I had no idea that we would be able to enter Syria that morning. I didn’t know if the Lebanese border authorities would let us in or what would wait for us on the other side. Are regime forces still stationed on the border? Will opposition fighters welcome us?

I called a friend in Daraa who was an opposition activist. I asked him if he could meet us on the Syrian side of the border and take us to Damascus. “I need an hour,” he told me.

We crossed the border when it opened at 8am. It’s a 40-minute drive from the center of what used to be Bashar al-Assad’s seat of power. The last time I traveled this route was in 2011.

As we were on our way to the central Umayyad Square, we saw people tearing down symbols of the regime. Abandoned tanks were left on the highway, and army uniforms were scattered on the sides of the roads.

The streets were not yet crowded; People were still in their homes, afraid, and unsure of what to deal with.

We traveled to Umayyad Square. I needed to pinch myself to believe I was actually there.

The ceremonial firing was almost non-stop. The opposition fighters were from various parts of Syria. They also looked shocked. But the feeling you had was that they were breathing again.

The first one is directly from Umayyad Square

It’s time to do our job… broadcast those images to the world. I think we were among the first international journalists to arrive at the arena that morning.

But we had major communication problems. I was able to send some videos from my phone to the news desk in Doha, but we were unable to broadcast live.

Syrian state television was located in Umayyad Square. I asked the opposition fighters who were guarding the building if they had any way to help us. I told them: “You have to help us.”

They didn’t know how to operate a satellite truck so they started looking for employees. An hour or so later, one of the engineers came to work and helped us give a first-hand account of the history under construction.

It was almost surreal that we were using the channel resources that the regime has used for decades to control the narrative — to tell the world that there was a new Syria.

Atrocities and false hope

The regime fell and the secret doors opened. Opposition fighters released the prisoners, but many other prisoners are still missing.

For years I have been speaking about enforced disappearances in Syria, illegal and arbitrary arrests by security forces, and the suffering of the victims’ families. We have been speaking to them, human rights lawyers and activists for many years.

Then I found myself in Saydnaya prison. The story was before us. It was real.

There were thousands of people making their way to the detention center which was located at the top of a steep hill. They walked approximately three kilometers (two miles). Everyone had the same story – they had come hoping to find their loved ones. They came from all over Syria.

It was the second day since the “liberation” of Damascus. Those inside the prison, believed to be several hundred, were released.

Where are the others?

According to Syrian human rights groups, more than 100,000 people are still missing.

We watched their families – fathers, brothers, mothers, wives and sisters – hanging on in false hope.

There were rumors of secret rooms and hidden underground cells, although a White Helmets Civil Defense volunteer told us that was not true. “We checked the entire area.”

“Then why are you still digging?” I asked him.

“Can’t you see them? How desperate they are… We have to do something, even if it’s a false hope… just for them.”

Families were reading every paper they could find in the hope of finding any clue.

There was nothing in this dark prison but unimaginable horrors, which the people there described to us as an “execution chamber.”

When we got back to the car, more people were arriving.

“Did they find anyone? Did they find anyone?” They will ask us.

If the dead could talk

More doors have opened since the end of Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Mass graves were discovered.

We were told that there are many in the town of Al-Qatifa, north of Damascus. After years of silence and fear, local residents are beginning to express their opinions.

Among them was the town cemetery guard, who told us he prayed over dozens of bodies that security forces buried there in 2012. Another man told us that regime men used his bulldozers and machinery to dig graves.

He told us: “Yes, I saw them throwing the bodies that were in the refrigerator trucks into the graves, but we could not talk otherwise we would be killed as well.”

Show us where. We were standing on a mass grave.

Stand and bear witness

This was not the first time I wrote about the regime’s atrocities in Syria. In 2013 in Aleppo, we watched Syrians in the opposition-controlled east of the city retrieve dozens of bodies from a river flowing from government-controlled areas on higher ground.

They had gunshot wounds to their heads and their hands were tied. Then we watched their relatives trying to identify them in the schoolyard.

I had trouble sleeping that night. I also had difficulty sleeping after my visit to Saydnaya prison.

I tried to put myself in their place and thought: “How can you live all these years without knowing the whereabouts of your loved one, and think about the torture they were subjected to, and see the execution chamber, and stand in the same room?” …Then imagine what they had to go through?”

We cannot change what happened. We can only document history and hope that one day the victims and their families will find peace, justice and accountability.