Meet the soldiers who are "hunting" to capture the top leaders of the Assad regime who terrorized Syria

By the standards of other cities the Sky News team has been to or visited in the immediate aftermath of a revolution, Damascus appears relatively calm.

They expected masked gunmen to be stationed on every corner, patrolling the streets in groups, or moving around in trucks equipped with machine guns at the ready and rocket-propelled grenades strapped to the roof or on the backs of the fighters.

But that's not the case in Damascus. There are checkpoints inside and outside the city, but overall, the militia groups that supported Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which led the control of Syria, are staying in the shadows and don't want to be seen.

Indeed, many of them have now become part of the newly formed General Security force, and all are dressed in black uniforms.

People often ask what Damascus is like now that Bashar al-Assad's regime is gone, reports the Telegraph.

Firstly, apart from a few brief visits to Damascus before 2011, once the uprising began, the Sky News team was in the west or north of the country with demonstrators and later rebel forces – away from the capital.

It was also among a small group of journalists on a wanted list by the regime, so traveling to government-controlled areas was a non-starter.

So Sky News' visits to Damascus are part revelation, and part confirmation of what they expected to see, particularly the vast suburban areas reduced to rubble by Assad's security forces with the help of the Russian military.

Their impression is of a city that looks to the future, but still suffers from its recent bloody history.

Its people are trying to move forward, but many remain amidst the ruins and reconstruction remains a distant hope.

From Umayyad Square in Damascus, the team of British journalists jumped into the back of a truck full of General Security soldiers and sped away through busy traffic, and towards a road leading to a hilltop overlooking the city.

They passed the grand presidential palace, built by Assad's men but now under the management of the self-proclaimed "Government of Salvation."

They met the man in charge of security here in the capital, Abdulrahman Dabbagh, a young cousin of the country's new president Ahmed al Sharaa.

He said that to move forward, Syria must also hunt down the senior leaders of the Syrian regime who terrorized the entire population.

"Syrians have every right to see justice served for those who caused them harm during the rule of this now-defunct regime," Dabbagh said.

"By nature, every human being finds comfort in witnessing accountability, justice, and the just return of what has been taken," he added.

He was asked if it is difficult to track down those responsible.

"There are assessments, investigations and around-the-clock work to find these criminals," he explained.

"It's not always about taking direct action against every person we identify, however, we are awaiting official orders to arrest certain figures," he added.

Hardly a family in this country was untouched by the regime and its ruthless program of detention and torture in prisons.

Bariya, 63, was detained for 100 days. Her crime? She was accused of cooking food for demonstrators and spying on regime checkpoints in the city of Homs.

Inside the prison, she says torture was the norm and memories of the men's screams still haunt her.

"It would start as soon as the sun set. The torture was endless. My husband was not spared - I recognized his cries. They tortured him," she said.

Bariya is still so afraid of the Assad regime, she won't show her face and won't allow her last name to be used.

She was arrested at the height of the anti-Assad protests, along with many members of her family. Seven of them died in custody: her husband, one of her sons, two brothers, a nephew, a cousin and her brother-in-law's son. To this day, she has no idea what happened.

The legacy of Assad's tyranny is pain and death, and the recent history of this ancient country is still raw for so many. /Telegraph/

Meet Syria's Assad regime hunters.

The various militias that supported Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) – the group that led the takeover of Syria – are now part of the newly created general security unit.

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