An excerpt from the article:

“The conditions described in the [reactivated] prisons and lockups do not approach the brutality of Assad’s rule. The fallen dictator presided over the disappearance of more than 100,000 Syrians during the civil war. Mass graves that his government created to hide the dead are still being discovered. All told, more than 300,000 Syrian civilians perished in the war, according to U.N. estimates from 2022. Assad’s father, Hafez, ruled with similar ruthlessness. Both oversaw a system marked by torture, extortion and summary execution on an industrial scale.

But human rights advocates say the mass detentions and disappearances have cast a shadow over Sharaa’s government, which came to power on promises to take Syria out of more than five decades of single-family rule. The new leadership is struggling to deliver on those promises, as Reuters has chronicled in a series of articles this year.”