This time he was there by choice. Mohammed Darwish was back in a jail that was run by Syria's feared intelligence services -- and Bashar al-Assad was no longer president.
Cell number nine reeks of putrefaction. It is an underground windowless room with blackened dripping walls where the 34-year-old journalist was held with around 100 others.
Darwish was detained for months by one of the most feared branches of the former government's many-tentacled intelligence services.