Warning: This episode contains descriptions of torture and death. It also contains audio of death and grief. Under Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian government set up a vast network of prisons and torture chambers that swallowed up tens of thousands of people. For years, those perceived as enemies of the regime would disappear into the system, and their families would have no idea what happened to them. Christina Goldbaum, who has covered the events in Syria, takes us inside one of those prisons and tells the story of one man who survived to tell the tale. Guest: Christina Goldbaum, the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The New York Times.
Tennis teaches you not to be distracted from being in the very present at every moment that you're out there competing.
It's more important to be present in life than even on a tennis court.
That's eight time Grand Slam champion Andre Agassi on everything and nothing to do with tennis.
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This is Christina Goldbaum.
I'm in Damascus, capital of Syria right now, and I'm walking through a prison that's underneath one of the intelligence branches in the capital.
There are these three solitary confinement rooms and etched onto the walls are messages from prisoners who held here.
One of the messages says, I love you, Mom.
There are others that are praying to God.
There's also an etching of a mosque.
What's inside that folder.
He'S reading.
And earlier, as we're going through the building, we found a folder with pictures of what looked like prisoners who had been tortured, been killed.
This is like a report for the.
Death and death certificates next to them.
You know, when we first arrived in Syria just a day after the rebels took the country, there was a lot of celebration, a lot of people out on the streets finally feeling this taste of freedom.
And as the week has gone on and we've come to more and more of these prisons and torture facilities, it's just clear how, just how much of a reckoning the country is going to have to go through now to confront and reconcile with all of the horrors that happened over the past couple decades.
From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is the daily after the fall of Bashar al Assad and the opening up of of Syria, tens of thousands of people were released from prisons across the country.
Many had been locked away for years.
Today, my colleague Christina Goldbaum takes us inside one of those prisons and tells us the story of a man who made it out.