Before she fled Syria and came to the UK in 2016, Raya Homsi was told her fiance had been tortured to death in the Sednaya prison run by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. All she had to go on was the word of one person who said he had witnessed it.
Now, after Assad’s fall, the human rights campaigner wonders if he might still be alive, among the thousands of people liberated in the last 24 hours from the facility near Damascus that Amnesty International called a “human slaughterhouse”.
“I have nothing official so I’m still a bit hopeful that maybe that was not true and maybe he will just be among the people who were released from Sednaya prison,” she said.
Homsi is one of nearly 30,000 displaced Syrians in the UK celebrating the fall of Assad and what Keir Starmer described as his “barbaric regime” over the weekend, when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels seized power in a fast-moving offensive.
Fireworks shot up into the sky and crowds cheered in Trafalgar Square on Sunday afternoon as Syrians based in the UK celebrated a day many thought they would never see. Similar celebrations took place across the country, including in Manchester, where Homsi has built a life in the nine years since she fled.
“It’s very surreal,” she said. “Even my parents only know Assad. It’s been 55 years almost for the father and son ruling Syria. I’m overwhelmed with how happy I am, definitely. But also it’s a lot to process in a short time.”
She said Syrian people had “paid a very high price for this moment to happen”.
Zouhir Al-Shimale, a Syrian journalist and disinformation expert, was at the Trafalgar Square celebrations. “Having suffered and been displaced because of [Assad], having him fall in that way was just for everyone unexpected and miraculous,” he said. “There were no words for us to describe that moment.”
Shimale’s story is similar to Homsi’s. He came to the UK in 2016 because he would have been imprisoned if he had stayed. He said: “I’m sure I can [return to Syria] now. With Assad away, I will be able to go back.”
Many UK-based Syrians spoke not of surprise but of shock. It was something they had not seen coming. Zahra Albarazi, a director at the Syrian Legal Development Programme, a human rights organisation, said: “I have a daughter and I thought maybe in her lifetime, I did not expect it in my lifetime, we were all expecting Bashar al-Assad’s son to take over. This is a huge shock for everybody.
“It’s really lifted a cloak of sadness that’s been put on people’s lives. And people are just overwhelmingly happy.”
When Mo Helmi and his family arrived on the Isle of Bute, on the west coast of Scotland, in December 2015, to escape the horrors unfolding in their native Syria, they were looking for hope, he said. “What we found was the highest hospitality that you could imagine. We found love.”
The 12 Syrian families who arrived in the seaside town of Rothesay that winter were the first refugees to make their home on the island since the second world war, but were enfolded by the local community, who created a pop-up crisis centre where they could access the pulses they were used to cooking with, as well as warmer clothes, and even made plans for a city imam to travel along the coast to conduct Friday prayers.
As the families established themselves, the Helmis decided to open a bakery, based around the pastry skills of Mo’s brother. It was such an instant success that the family have since opened three other bakeries on the mainland.
Mo and his family had been following developments in Syria closely over the past ten days. He said: “We could not eat or sleep, just watching the news and social media.”
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“For me, I love the Syrian flag and the Scottish flag, and I do believe I have two homes.”
All the Syrians who spoke to the Guardian said the human rights work they were doing was only just get started. “Obviously, people are not naive,” said Albarazi. “People do fear about what’s going to happen next. But whatever challenges will come next won’t be as traumatic as what people have been living through.”
Shimale said he thought Syria would not be able to move on without accountability for those who were part of the Assad regime. “The criminals seem to have escaped,” he said. “My concern now is like, where is the justice to those who’ve displaced me, those who killed my relatives and imprisoned my friends?
“If people don’t see trials being held to hold criminals accountable to their crimes, I think that will be a point of friction in the society that will definitely take a toll on its future.”
Ruba Sulaiman Khaled, a trainee solicitor and influencer from Stockport who has been unable to return to Syria since 2011, said she hoped there would be a “revolution, a new start for Syria” and that it was a time to “establish the country from the ground up”.
“As a lawyer who works with human rights organisations, my aim now is to be part of punishing Assad through the courts, for all the innocent people killed, raped and imprisoned,” she said. “All the Syrians around the world, whether we are Muslim or Christian, in the UK, Germany or the US, many of us are educated and we can build up Syria, but it will take time.”
Homsi agreed: “It’s not the end. It’s the beginning for a new journey towards democracy, justice and accountability. I believe in the Syrian civil society, we have been very strong facing a dictator.
“We never gave up.”