Documenting a period marred by mystery and surrounded by a cordon of silence for years, directors and producers worked to dig into the details of the era of the ousted Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, through dramatic productions broadcast throughout the month of Ramadan. Topics related to prisons, torture, and forced disappearance dominated all works that attempted to answer questions that have beset the victims and their families for years.

Published on: 02/22/2026 - 08:20Last updated: 02/22/2026 - 10:31

With extreme artistic precision, the director depicts a prison courtyard where men kneel on the ground with their heads bowed and their legs bound in chains, while the prison warden shouts at them, “I am here who gives life and causes death.” This representative scene, which sums up prison violence during the era of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and many like it, has become a prominent topic during the month of Ramadan in a number of Arab countries, where several series detail a dark phase whose wounds still have not healed to this day.

Prisons, in particular, and the crimes of torture, forced disappearances, and executions witnessed in their basements and executions, capture the attention of drama makers, after treating them was taboo before the overthrow of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, whose family ruled the country for decades with an iron fist.

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In the town of Zouk Mikael, northeast of Beirut, an abandoned soap factory was transformed into a copy of Saydnaya prison, in which the final episodes of the series “Exit to the Well,” which recalls a famous disobedience that took place in the prison in 2008, resulted in the deaths of dozens.

The director of the Jordanian series, Muhammad Lutfi, says, “For Syrians, Saydnaya Prison is a dark place” full of stories.

He added, "We focus in the work on a part of a specific historical stage, which is the 2008 disobedience, when the prisoners rose up against the soldiers and took control of the prison, and negotiations took place between them and the Syrian intelligence service."

According to its writer, Samer Radwan, the series monitors the reality of the relationship of Islamic movements with the former regime at the time, and the social repercussions that resulted from it.

In one of the scenes of the first episode, the detainees upon their arrival at Saydnaya Prison are subjected to a “welcome” in the manner of the jailers: insults, insults, and brutal beatings, before the prison warden addresses them by saying, “This (place) is not called a prison, its name is purgatory,” adding, “Either you purify your souls and minds of evil thoughts, or I will leave you craving the fire of hell and not seeing it.”

Saydnaya Prison is one of the largest prisons in Syria. It was designated for political detainees and public rights prisoners. It constitutes a disgrace in the history of the Assad family’s rule and an open wound for tens of thousands of Syrian families. Human rights organizations described it as a "human slaughterhouse."

The Association of Detainees and Missing Persons at Saydnaya Prison estimates the number of those who have entered it since the start of the 2011 protests at approximately thirty thousand, in addition to those who entered it before that, of whom only six thousand emerged alive, after the fall of Assad in December 2024.

Fearing the reaction of the authorities

In the first scene of the series, the Syrian actor Jamal Suleiman, in the role of the prisoner Sultan, appears in a harsh conversation with his family members, before he jumps at their request into a deep well, in a scene that reflects the conflicts and pressures that besiege the families of detainees in Syria, for one sin: they are the family of a detainee, who may be unaware of his fate for years and flounder between the security branches searching for a trace of him.

In a post on Facebook before the series began showing on the “Al-Arabi 2” channel, the “Al-Arabi Plus” application, and the second channel of the Syria TV network, writer Samer Radwan stated that he finished writing the series “four months before the fall of the Assad regime.”

However, according to what the series director reported at the end of last year, several challenges prevented filming from starting before Assad was overthrown, most notably the actors’ fear at the time of the authorities’ reaction.

"Tsar, there is neither time nor place."

After Assad fled Syria, issues related to his rule and his family became the focus of attention of drama makers.

Another series, entitled “The Tsar, No Time and No Place,” presents testimonies and experiences from inside detention centers during the war years. Since its first episode was shown, it has sparked widespread controversy on social media.

Showing series documenting the experiences of detainees raises criticism from families who are still waiting to know the fate of their children, and blames the new authority for not making the file a priority.

Read also: After “Al-Assadiya”: Is it possible to build a state of citizenship in Syria?... An interview with Ahmed Barqawi

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Caesar Families Association, in reference to the Caesar files that included more than fifty thousand photos of detainees who died in Syrian prisons during the suppression of the protests, affirmed its “categorical refusal to turn our tragedy into dramatic material shown on screens.”

She said, "The groaning of our children is not material for artistic circulation," demanding justice in the courts.

"Prefecture 15"

Specifically from Saydnaya prison, the story of the series “Prefecture 15” begins with the exit of a Lebanese and a Syrian from it after the overthrow of Assad.

Through the story of a Lebanese man who spent more than 20 years in detention and whose family thought he had died, the series restores, as its Lebanese producer Marwan Haddad explains to Agence France-Presse, the dominance of the former Syrian regime over the lives of the Lebanese.

The Syrian detainee’s family’s asylum in Lebanon sheds light on the phenomenon of asylum in the small country immersed in its crises and in a history of tense relations with Syria.

Lebanese screenwriter Karen Rizkallah explains, “We lived for years repeating that we did not want Lebanon to become the 15th governorate, and we fought each in its own way and in its field.”

Since the Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976 until its departure in 2005, Damascus controlled all aspects of political life and was accused of assassinating Lebanese politicians, journalists, and clerics opposed to Hafez al-Assad and after him his son Bashar.

Lebanese families are still waiting to know the fate of their children who were kidnapped in Syria. Rizkallah explains, "Some of them know deep down that their children are gone, but they need a conclusion to this case, and to know: Did this person die? On what date and in what place."

France 24 / AFP

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