Transcript of Victims of brutal Assad regime reveal horrors hidden from world | BBC News

Our correspondent Yogita Lemay has spent the day in a Damascus suburb called Ghouta, where chemical weapons were used on civilians in 2018. She's been speaking to victims and eyewitnesses of the chemical attack who now want a new investigation.

The horrors that Bashar Assad's regime tried to hide away from the world's view, their full scale is now being revealed bit by bit. This is Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus and a rebel support base founded by the regime and its allies. And on more than 1 occasion, chemical weapons were used here. We went to a lane where a chlorine bomb was dropped in 2018 right outside Tawfiq Viyam's house. He tells us this is the first time he's been able to speak freely about what happened to his wife and his 4 young children.

Omar Ali Mohammed Jodi.

I couldn't speak before this. Otherwise, the regime would have cut off my tongue. When the attack happened, people started choking and couldn't breathe. My wife and children were killed by chemical bombs, he says. As we talk to Tawfiq, another man Khaled Nasir tells us he also lost his family in the same attack, 2 toddlers and his pregnant wife.

Anger that he's had to suppress for 6 years spilling out.

We want fresh investigations. The whole world knows that Bashar Assad is an oppressor and a liar, and that he killed his own people.

For a people who for so long have not been able to talk freely, the minute we came out here, everybody had a story to tell us. And what we've heard here about the chemical attack is just a fraction of the brutality inflicted by the regime of Bashar al Assad on the people of his own country. Not far from the site of the attack, Tawfiq and Khalid took us to a mound by the side of a road, where they believe their families are buried in a mass grave. Today is the first time they've set foot here. Tawfiq says that if they had tried in the past, they would have been executed.

Now they want the grave dug up and a dignified funeral for their families. We also met Abdul Rehman Hejazi, an eyewitness, who went to Geneva to testify before the UN. He says he was forced to give the regime's version of events. Intelligence officers detained me and told me to lie about the attack. I was told to say people were killed by dust inhalation, not by chemicals.

And if I didn't, my family would not be safe, he told us. Undoubtedly, more such stories will come pouring out of Syria over the coming days. Yogad Alomayi, BBC News, Damascus.

Well, the sudden sudden city of Deraa was the center of the anti Assad unrest that started in 2011. And in response, government forces put it under a brutal 10 day siege. Our Middle East correspondent, Lucy Williamson, has traveled there to meet the mother of a 13 year old whose torture and death at the hands of the authorities helped to escalate the rebellion.

The road to president Assad's fall began in Deira, an opposition stronghold south of Damascus where years of fighting have left holes in homes and families. Days after Assad fled Syria, the mood here is still jubilant. If anyone should be celebrating, it's the Al Khatib family. The torture and death of 13 year old Hamza, arrested at an anti government rally in 2011, helped spark the long Syrian uprising against president Assad. But no 1 here was smiling today.

The family had just learned that Hamza's brother, Omar, had also died in custody 5 years after he was arrested. His death confirmed in documents found at the notorious Sadnaya prison. His mother told me since the regime fell, she'd been waiting for Omar to come home. Today, shaking with grief, she called on God for revenge.

I asked God to afflict him and his children with what afflicted my children. I hope he will pay the price.

When news of president Assad's fall came, the people of Deraa came here across Syria. People who suffered together are now celebrating together. But the opposition here is diverse. They've lost their common enemy. Now they need a common vision.

Dehrad's new military leader is an English literature graduate who defected from Syria's army during the protest that followed Hamza's death. His group, separate from the Islamists who swept into Damascus on Sunday, but both converged on the capital.

I said in Damascus when we entered, we thank God that we still alive to see this moment, this great moment. My friend, I trust in Syrian people. I trust that they will choose their best, choice. Nobody will accept, any, person who will be a dictator.

Choose? You mean elections?

Of course. That is what we are looking for.

In Dara's cemetery today, they laid the past to rest. The flag of the Syrian opposition tied around Hamza's headstone. 13 years after his death, the war with Assad has ended. But peace in Syria has not yet been won. Lucy Williamson, BBC News, Dara.