Man reunites with family after 38 years in prison

A Jordanian man identified as Osama Bashir Hassan al-Bataynah, has reunited with his family after spending 38 years in prison in Syria.

This was disclosed on Tuesday, by an official from the Jordanian Foreign Ministry Soufian al-Kodat, who noted that this is happening after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

He stated that the man had been found in Syria unconscious and suffering from memory loss.

Kodat further stated that the man’s relatives reported his disappearance in 1986 when he was just 18, and that he had been in jail ever since.

“He was transferred from Damascus to the Jaber border crossing (with Jordan) where he was handed over to border guards,” he stated.

Note that the rebels who swept Assad from power on Sunday also opened the prisons and released thousands of detainees.

Civil society groups had long accused Assad of presiding over a brutal regime of arbitrary arrests, torture and murder in prisons.