Harrowing footage from SDF-controlled prison shows detained children

Children as young as three years old are among the underage prisoners who were allegedly freed by Syrian government forces from a women’s prison in Raqqa on Sunday.

Footage aired on The New Arab’s affiliate publication, Syria TV, showed the moment when army personnel entered the facilities of the central women’s prison on the edge of Raqqa city.

Women and children who were held with them were seen emerging from cells after Asayish security forces linked with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) withdrew from the facility on Sunday.

The SDF has claimed that the prison in Raqqa was designated for women affiliated with the Islamic State group or accused of security-related offences, although rights groups accuse the group of using this charge against critics of its rule.

Prisoners interviewed by Syria TV, however, recounted the brutal conditions in which they were held and footage of detention facilities showed harrowing scenes of prisoners crammed in small, windowless cells. 

Hajja Umm Mahmoud, a prisoner who was released after spending more than a year and a half at the women’s prison in Raqqa, says the facility held a large number of women and children on various charges, some of them due to their relatives' alleged involvement with Syrian opposition forces.

Mahmoud herself had been sentenced to five years in prison on the charges of "contacting and receiving funding from fighters working for Turkey". She had been accused of contacting her sons, who are alleged to have been working within the ranks of opposition members.

The prisoner explained that forces detained children, if they were found to have "no breadwinners for them outside prison". Several of the children had "spent years inside detention centres, without receiving adequate care or education".

Activists have also raised the cases of a number of detainees who appear to have lost all recollection of their names and families, appealing to Syrians to identify them - a similar situation to when rebel groups freed Assad regime detention facilities.

According to the ceasefire agreement reached between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led SDF, the administration of institutions such as prisons and camps would be transferred to branches of the Syrian state, while maintaining a limited level of local governance.

The footage released of the prisons has prompted widespread debate online, with many social media users drawing parallels between the scenes of detainees released from prisons previously managed by the SDF and the moment when scores were freed from Syria's notorious Sednaya prison under the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime. 

Following the lightning offensive by HTS-led forces in December last year, thousands of children and women were freed from regime-held facilities, shedding light on the abuses, inhumane torture methods, and mass executions that took place during the Assad regime. 

 Newly emerging testimonies from prisoners like Mahmoud are also now raising questions among residents of Raqqa over the conditions of those held by the SDF during their near-decade-long control of Raqqa.