'We paid a high price for this' Refugees in UK cheer the fall of a long-despised dictatorship

Refugees in UK cheer the fall of a long-despised dictatorship

- Robyn Vinter Chris Osuh Libby Brooks

Before she fled Syria for the UK in 2016, Raya Homsi was told her fiancé had been killed in the brutal Sednaya prison run by the Assad regime. All she had to go on was the word of one person who said he had witnessed it.

But after the fall of the regime, the human rights campaigner wonders if he may be alive, among the thousands of people freed from the facility near Damascus dubbed the "human slaughterhouse" by Amnesty International.

"I have nothing official so I'm still a bit hopeful that maybe that was not true, and maybe he will be among the people released from Sednaya prison," she said.

Homsi is one of nearly 30,000 displaced Syrians in the UK celebrating the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, and what Keir Starmer described as his "barbaric regime", over the weekend, when the rebel Islamist alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized power.

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 since she fled Syria.