"I met 2 men who couldn't remember their names", painful confession from Assad's infamous prison

In the first hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, hundreds of citizens have marched to the place that for many of them embodied his oppressive rule: the infamous "Saydnaya" prison.

The notorious military compound has been used to imprison tens of thousands of people who have opposed the Syrian government over the decades.

Among those searching for people who have disappeared within the walls of this prison was doctor Sharvan Ibesh, chief executive of the Bahar aid group.

He arrived there at midnight to help a friend look for her father, who is believed to have been held in the prison for 13 years.

In an interview with the BBC, Doctor Ibesh described scenes of "chaos", with hundreds of people inside the prison trying to find their loved ones.

"It was very disappointing. We didn't find him and we didn't get any information. My friend is very upset because for 13 years she dreamed of finding her father. We were told that many prisoners have been moved to another country," he said . .

According to him, hundreds of people have left this prison. Syrian civil defense group the White Helmets are meanwhile searching for prisoners in Saydnaya following inmates' confessions of secret entrances to underground cells, although none have yet been found.

A mosque 20 km away is being used as a meeting place for released prisoners and their families.

When Ibesh visited Saydnaya on Sunday, he saw several newly released people in a traumatized state and recounted one of the most moving stories, which is a derivative of the oppression by the Assad regime.

"A group of people surrounded two men who had just been released, trying to help them. They had been held in prison for several years and were disoriented. They didn't even know what time it was. People around them would ask 'what's your name' and 'how old are you?', but they couldn't even answer those questions. It was hard to tell how old they were looking. The men were completely lost, they were just looking ahead," Ibesh said.

Assad's regime imprisoned hundreds of thousands of political prisoners. The Turkey-based Saydnaya Prison Prisoners and Disappeared Association group described it as a "death camp".

Throughout the civil war, which began in 2011, government forces held hundreds of thousands of people in detention camps, where human rights groups say torture was common. (A2 Televizion)