Global News Podcast - Syrians attempt to free political prisoners

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Civil defence workers in Syria are trying to reach underground cells to release some of the nation's tens of thousands of political prisoners. Also: More than 150 mostly elderly people are killed by gangs in Haiti.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If Hitler isn't defeated, it's the end of the free world. Purple Heart Warriors, listen now by searching for dramas wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles. And at 14 Hours GMT on Monday, the 9th of December, these are our main stories. Syrians are celebrating the end of the Assad regime after 54 years. But there is also great concern about what happens now. We hear from people on the ground and our international editor about what they're expecting. And civil defence workers are trying to reach underground cells to release some of the nation's

tens of thousands of political prisoners. Also in this podcast, a new low in Haiti's escalating violence as more than 180 mostly elderly people are killed by gangs accused of witchcraft and Antisemitism is a major threat and Antisemitism has been on the rise and we have seen incidents that have been targeted at the Jewish community Police in Australia say a fire at a synagogue looks likely to have been an act of terrorism looks likely to have been an act of terrorism. We begin this podcast in Syria as the country begins its post-Assad future. Such was the speed with which the regime fell that diplomats and politicians around the

world are still trying to work out what will happen next. In Syria itself there are many emotions swirling around at the moment, joy from many that after 54 years a brutal political dynasty is no more, but there is also great concern about what happens now. An overnight curfew was imposed by the rebel group HTS in the capital Damascus. Now though people are out on the streets. Now though, people are out on the streets. Shops are open and even some public buses are running. The rebels now in charge have promised to transfer power to a transitional government.

But that is likely to take days, if not weeks, to happen. In the meantime, they've been taking action. As they move forward, they entered some of Assad's prisons where tens of thousands of political dissidents have been held and tortured over the last few decades. Don't be afraid, don't be afraid. That is some of the rebels freeing the prisoners at Sadnaya prison in Damascus saying, you're safe, you're safe, get out. The rebels say they freed more than 3,500 prisoners from Sednaya. Our correspondent

Barbara Pledarsha has been there and sent this report. Thousands of opposition supporters are said to have been tortured and killed in Sednaya by the Assad regime. When we arrived there were hundreds of people climbing the steep hill to the prison and crowding around its entrance. Inside investigators were pounding the ground in a cellar apparently used for storing fuel searching for an entrance to underground cells. A member of the White Helmets told us there was no floor plan to indicate prisoners were trapped underground, only accounts from former inmates. Dozens of men sifted through mounds of documents

scattered on the floor looking for clues to the hidden cells or the whereabouts of their loved ones. For many, the fate of prisoners still missing is the most pressing issue now that the regime has fallen. Lina Sinjab had to leave Syria under the Assad regime, but has now been back in Damascus for the last day or so. She told my colleague Lucy Gray

about what's happening now. As the day started it was slowly picking up but then by midday the city has been busy. Lots of people are out and about in the streets. The main square, Omayad Square, is still a celebratory mood with some rebels gathering around, many civilians shooting in the air, singing revolutionary songs. HTS fighters deployed to protect several government buildings. I've seen them outside the Central Command of the Ba'ath Party, outside the military base of the air forces, and certainly as well in the main square in Damascus,

Saht Arnous is called, where Central Bank is located. I've managed to talk to the fighter there and he said our main duty was to liberate the country from Assad. Now we need to protect its properties because this belongs to all people. Speaking to ordinary people, bakeries are back opening, some restaurants, some food shops are opening and it seems that the people are regaining trust and slowly coming out and to practice their daily life. And how are people feeling? Are they feeling nervous? I mean obviously we saw the joy, didn't we? But how are they feeling generally now that sort of news is settling in?

You know I think everyone have the question about stability, the safety. Are the rebels able to provide this for the country? Are they going to provide the rule of law? Are they going to impose Islamic rule on people? When should we come back? But I have to say, so far, the situation looks to be under control. I have spoken to some of the Christian community here in Damascus, in Bab Tuma neighborhood, and it seems that they had a meeting yesterday

with a delegation from HTS to reassure them in protecting the neighborhoods from thieves, from thugs, from mobs who are taking the opportunity of the situation and breaking into public areas. So there are signs of goodwill and good practices. The test is really on the reality, how they're going to implement it, leading towards finding a new government to be in charge. Lina Sinjab. Jubilation comes in many forms and while many in Syria are celebrating on the ground, as we've heard, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, many who'd left Syria

are celebrating by returning or hoping to return to the country they were exiled from. So how exactly are those feelings being expressed? Let's hear from our correspondent Rami Ruhayim on the Masnaar crossing on Lebanon's border with Syria. The first thing we saw yesterday immediately after the fall of the regime was celebrations and people trying to get into Syria. They couldn't wait after they got the news. And this has continued, this movement into Syria. We don't have exact numbers. We're trying to get some from the Lebanese authorities of how many people have left Lebanon over the last couple of days. But also on the other side there are also some Syrians who are trying to come into Lebanon. So

some people have worries about the situation and they would like to wait outside of Syria as they get a clearer idea of where things are going. So we see that as well. And now the Lebanese army has sent actually reinforcements to this point because there's quite some pressure from the large number of people trying to get in. And Rami, what about, is there any concern amongst the Syrians who want to go back to Syria about the exact nature of the rebel group there? I haven't heard anything of the sort.

And actually, even the people who are trying to get in from Syria into Lebanon, because of their concerns, their concerns, at least the ones who have spoken to us, they didn't say we are afraid of the rebels or of their rule. On the contrary, they said that so far nothing has happened that is scary from the rebels, and also that they have been receiving reassurances, and those of them with jobs, especially in the government, have been receiving calls to return to their jobs, even with promises of raises, so that the institutions in Syria keep running smoothly. However, they say what we're worried about are individual acts of vengeance.

Some of the people we spoke to were in the army. One man said, I didn't kill anyone, but I was in the army and I'm afraid because I was in the army. So they are afraid of individual acts of vengeance and also of the kind of disorder and chaos that might occur because of the sudden collapse of the regime. Rami Rouhaim. Let's hear more now about the rebel group that seems to be in control of Damascus, HTS. Well, under Abu Mohammed al-Ghulani, the group has largely run Idlib province in the northwest of the country for some time. Many countries list HTS as a terror organisation and the United States currently has a $10 million bounty on the head of its leader. Salim al-Dhari is a supervisor with the landmine clearance organisation, the Halo Trust, who's in Idlib.

He says he's been able to live a normal life under their leadership. I have been living here for seven years and nothing to be afraid about it. In my opinion, the situation I guess will be better than before because the people will return to their homes, the shelling will stop, the airstrike will stop. The situation will be more stable as well as release of prisoners and for me and for the whole Syrian people there is a sense of hope. This Syrian woman though is not sure the situation will be better. Unfortunately as a woman I'm not sure whether I will be able to continue living as I want to.

I'm not sure whether I will have my freedom. Let me tell you why. When they got power and they were in Idlib I saw that the style of living is not my style. I'm not so sure that corruption will end and dictatorship will end because they didn't give us a good example when they were in the opposition. Well inside Syria the rebel coalition and regime officials say they are working towards a transitional government and the building of a new Syria together. Mr Assad's Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Al al-Jalali, said he was willing to meet the Islamist rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani to assist with the transfer of power. So very early days, but is an orderly transition a possibility for HTS? A question for our

security correspondent, Frank Gardner. They have governed, as you heard there, in Idlib province in the northwest for quite some time. They withstood air attacks from the Russian Air Force and they have established rule of law there. They have been criticized by some for lack of respect for human rights, but their leader, who has been going by the name of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. He's now ditched that nom de guerre because he's trying to distance himself from his jihadist past. So he's gone back to his original name, which is Ahmad al-Shara.

He's going to great lengths to try to reassure people that the government that they will be ushering in is one that represents all Syrians, that it'll be inclusive. And that, I think, is prompting some people, including Pat McFadden, the UK cabinet minister, to suggest that the UK amongst others was looking at reviewing whether there was a need to maintain the terrorist nomenclature, the terrorist prescription for HTS. It does have Jihadist roots. It was linked to Al-Qaeda until it split in 2016. And there

were links with the hideous butcher and rapist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was the founder of ISIS, as it were, the kind of main leader of it until he was killed in an airstrike. But that was a long time ago. And some people, including the former MI6 chief, Sir John Saws, are arguing that it's time to move on and that, in his words, it would be ridiculous if the UK government didn't do business with the new Syrian government. So I think the signs at the moment are pretty good. I think the big challenge, or one of the many challenges, for the new government, and particularly

for Al-Pashara, aka Jalolani is going to be finding the right balance between establishing proper rule of law and establishing discipline within his own ranks to make sure that there isn't looting, there isn't score settling, there isn't arbitrary executions and justice and revenge killings. And at the same time being democratic enough

that he gets the new Syrian government to be internationally acceptable in a way that the Taliban have completely failed to do in Afghanistan. Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, also gave his assessment. There is an argument that Syria won't fall into chaos because they've had chaos of the war, the killing, half the pre-war population either displaced inside the country or refugees abroad. I've driven through, I haven't had a visa for Syria under the regime since 2018 but for that I spent a lot of time there and there is

village after village, town after town, that's absolutely destroyed. So maybe they have learned their lesson about working together, Let's hope so. The argument against that is that after dictatorships go there's often a vacuum, there's desire for revenge, there are weapons everywhere. In Syria there are dozens of armed groups with various forms of funding. In the South there are tribal-based militias. Will they work with the Islamist groups that have come down from the north? HTS, the lead group in all of this, have rebranded themselves and plenty of analysts say they have genuinely moved away from being jihadist extremists into an Islamist nationalist form of potential government. But you know there are other Islamist, jihadist groups in Syria who definitely have not changed. How do you start a political process, national reconciliation

after all of that? And one more thing as well as people come back into the country. For years after 2011, western countries, including the UK, tried really hard to encourage an effective external political opposition from political exiles. They argued between themselves the whole time and it never became coherent. Jeremy Bowen. Still to come on this podcast. We've seen as Taylor Swift has traversed the United States, Australia, Singapore, Europe, she has brought along many economic booms. Yeah, after almost two years and two billion dollars in ticket sales, the end of an era

for the Queen of Pop. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Watson in the Cook Islands, where we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now to what appears to be a new low in the gang violence that's gripped Haiti. There are reports that over the weekend around 180 people, many of them elderly, have been killed after a

witch doctor told a gang leader that they were responsible for his child's death. Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner Volker Turk said there had been a shocking number of killings in Haiti. This past weekend, at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince in the Cité Soleil area. These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people. Our online Latin America editor Vanessa Buschluta told me more.

The details of this latest massacre are still relatively hazy. What we know is what the National Human Rights Defense Network, a human rights group which has proven very reliable, has told us and that is that at least 110 elderly people were killed on the orders of a gang leader named Monel Felix, also known as Mikano. And as you mentioned in your introduction, what seems to have triggered this massacre is that Mikano's son fell ill and he was told that witchcraft was behind this. Now this goes back to folklore in Haiti where there's a belief that especially elderly people can turn

into Lugarous, shape-shifters, who then attack children and so that's why elderly people were targeted in this horrific event. Now this appears to have taken place in Sidi Soleil which is a notorious slum area of the capital and yet elsewhere there are still huge security problems even the more affluent parts of the capital as well. That's right I mean there was a lull in the violence between May and September when there was an uneasy truce between the gangs that now hold sway over much of Haiti really and then that truce was broken at the beginning of

October when there was a massacre, so far the worst massacre with 115 people killed in the Antibonite region, so outside of the capital where so far most of the violence had been concentrated. That was on the 3rd of October and as you mentioned there, there has also been a shift of the violence towards the more affluent areas, the places where there's still embassies and where aid groups have been having their headquarters and where there was relative security. And as you can imagine that's also prompted many international aid groups to that's also prompted many international aid groups to finally leave Haiti in the face of this violence, including a group called Doctors Without Borders, which had been providing medical aid to many Haitians. Vanessa Buschluter.

In Australia, police now say a fire at a synagogue in Melbourne on Friday looks likely to have been an act of terrorism. The building was set alight while members inside were at morning prayers. The local police commissioner described it as a callous and horrific attack. Our Australia correspondent Katie Watson has more. Police say three suspects are being investigated in connection with Friday's arson attack on the Addas Israel Synagogue in south east Melbourne. Chief Commissioner Shane Patton from Victoria Police said he'd met with federal officers and Australia's intelligence service who

all determined that it was likely a terrorism incident. We have ensured that we have increased police in the areas, increased visibility and making sure we're out and about at synagogues, at other places of worship, at places of significance to the Jewish community. And the investigation will now take its course and will follow where the evidence takes us. The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, though, condemned the attack immediately,

calling it anti-Semitic and an outrage. Anti-Semitism is a major threat, and anti-Semitism has been on the rise and we have seen incidents such as this that have been targeted specifically at the Jewish community. The police have said that there's no evidence to suggest further attacks but they aren't ruling anything out. Katie Watson. The French film director Christophe Rougier is on trial today facing

charges of sexually abusing the actress Adèle Henel when she was underage in one of the first MeToo cases to emerge from French cinema. Miss Henel has accused him of repeatedly touching her inappropriately after they met working on the movie The Devils in 2001 when she was 12 and he was 36. He denies the charges. Paul Moss has been following the story. He is looking at very serious charges. I mean he's a 59 year old film director. He's not one of the most famous in France but he has had some success. He made that film you referred to The Devils, also a film called Children of the Shantytown which got a few awards

But yes, he said that while he was working on the devil's he's been accused of beginning a sexually abusive relationship with Adele And now she says he used to kiss her on the neck There was sexual touching and that this then went on for three years She says he told her you're like a woman stuck in a girl's body Now when people started investigating, investigators started looking at these claims, they say that members of the film crew themselves came forward and said they had felt uneasy about what was going on and said they looked like a

couple, which just wasn't right. Now Adela now then went on to become far more successful. She starred in a film called Portrait of a Lady on Fire which won lots and lots of awards all over the world and it was while the spotlight was on her that she decided to tell the story of what she says Christophe Ruge had done to her. I should say he denies the allegations, he says Adelle Anelli's just outriff of revenge because he didn't cast her in any other films but he does admit that what he says errors were made that he made errors what that means I guess we will find out hopefully during this trial and Paul Adele Anel has become a bit of a figurehead for the Me Too movement in France hasn't she? Very much I mean as

you alluded to this all happened while the American Me Too movement was developing with cases like Harvey Weinstein going to court. She said all along she was not the only case that there was an attitude of France, a sort of boys will be boys attitude that this thing was often ignored. Bear in mind she was speaking when France's most famous contemporary film star, Gerard Depardieu, was being investigated. He's set to go on trial next year accused of two cases of sexual assault. He's also been charged with rape. And, accused of two cases of sexual assault. He's also been charged with rape. And after Adele and Elle started campaigning, other women also came forward.

Two more directors were accused of sexually abusing members of their cast. She then really hit the headlines when Roman Polanski was invited to the Cannes Film Festival. A man who's been already convicted in America of sexual intercourse with a minor, she stormed out saying well done, paedophile. That means that this case coming up is going to get a lot of attention for the case itself, but also because it is seen as just the first perhaps of a whole series that are putting not just individuals but the French film industry on trial. POMOS. Now to South Korea, where the country's Justice Department has banned the president, Yoon Suk-yul, from leaving the country, deepening the nation's political

crisis. Mr. Yoon is under investigation for briefly imposing martial law last week. Our Asia Pacific editor, Mickey Bristo, reports. Banning a sitting president from leaving the country he's supposed to be governing is a major move and raises questions about what control Mr. Yoon now has over the government. The sitting president from leaving the country he's supposed to be governing is a major move, and raises questions about what control Mr. Yoon now has over the government. On Sunday his party said power had been handed over to the Prime Minister, but on Monday South Korea's Ministry of Defence said Mr. Yoon still had at least one role, commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Opposition politicians said the current chaos was unconstitutional and have again planning to try to impeach the president. Miki Bristo. Taylor Swift has wrapped up her record-breaking eras world tour in the Canadian city of Vancouver, ending on her hit song Karma. song Karma. It has been a global tour lasting almost two years and generating two billion dollars from tickets. The first tour to do so. Stephanie Prentice has this report. It's been almost two years, 149 shows and five continents. And now the record-breaking Eras Tour has finally come to an end. Fans in Vancouver, Canada gathered outside the venue to meet each other, compare custom-made

outfits, and of course trade friendship bracelets, a tradition that's now become a key part of each show. We took the friendship bracelet theme really literally and we thought it would be really cute to pick our favorite songs and put them into a bracelet. I think the sense of community is something that really is amazing. Walking down the street today, I saw so many people come up to us and just wanted to trade bracelets and just like, speak with one another. The tour was famously difficult to get tickets to, at one point even triggering the US Congress

to step in to debate the ticketing industry. But the high prices didn't stop fans flying anywhere in the world they could get tickets. And the final date of the tour was no exception. I went to LA, I went to Mexico City, and I want to go to the last show of the year. I've been a fan since I was, I think, 10. Right now I'm 30. It's like a lot of my life.

As well as breaking attendance records, the tour has boosted economies globally, becoming the highest grossing concerts of all time. Brian West is the Taylor Swift reporter for the USA Today network. What's been so fascinating to follow this over the past two years is the fact that not only do fans log on and watch every single minute of this three hour show, but also the added benefits that have come along with it. We've seen as Taylor Swift has traversed the United States, Australia, Singapore, Europe, she has brought along many economic booms.

As well as economic booms, a performance in Edinburgh, Scotland caused seismic activity due to fans dancing, earning it the name Quake It Off. Speaking on stage in Vancouver, Taylor Swift praised her fans and the community they create at the shows. In return, the audience delivered on a social media plan to sing Happy Birthday to her. She'll be turning 35 in a few days. The big question now is what's next?

Fans had been anticipating a re-record of her sixth album, Reputation, and many on social media noted full film crews on stage at the gigs, speculating she could have been shooting a documentary. Taylor herself ended the night by describing the tour as the most exhausting, all-encompassing, but most wonderful thing that had ever happened in her life. So she may be forgiven for taking a final bow for now That report was by Stephanie Prentice And that's all from us for now But there will be a new edition of the global news podcast later

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Charlotte Hadroy-Kalzymska and the producer was Anna Murphy. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.

Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Watson in the Cook Islands where we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.