Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was so brutal that Freedom House ranked his country dead last among independent states in 2024, shortly before Syria’s bloody civil war finally resulted in his fleeing the country. The infrastructure of that brutality was an extensive system of dungeons, as exposed in a recent report.Those dungeons are back in the news because the new regime, which pledged to close them, is still operating them.

Yesterday, Reuters reported that former al Qaeda affiliate and current Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has reopened Assad’s prisons and filled them with opponents of the new regime. These include members of the Alawite and Druze minorities, who faced ethnic cleansing by Sharaa’s forces this past year, among others. Reuters wrote:

Throughout, there were other detentions from all denominations in the name of security: large numbers of people, many from Syria’s Sunni majority, accused of vague links to Assad; human-rights activists; Christians who say they have been shaken down for information or money; Shiites picked up at checkpoints and accused of ties with Iran or Hezbollah.

The number of those incarcerated seems much lower than under the Assad regime but far higher than what it would be if Sharaa were keeping his pledge from a year ago to close the dungeons completely.

The Trump administration claims that Syria’s change in government makes it a legitimate political and business partner. The use of old dungeons for newly labeled dissidents exposes the error in this belief.