Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria's most brutal jail were over.
"What has happened?" asked one prisoner after another.
"You are free, come out! It is over," cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone.
"Bashar has gone. We have crushed him!"
The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital Damascus, having sent president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war.