The prison director’s office overlooks the old prison facility, the site of a 2022 attack on the prison when IS sleeper cells attacked from the outside while prisoners took guards hostage on the inside.
IS is slowly rebuilding itself and one of its key goals will be the prison,” the director of Panorama prison said, asking for his name not to be shared for fear of being targeted by members of the radical group.
Kurdish officials fear the group will take advantage of Syria’s current security vacuum to attack the detention facilities and try to spring their alleged peers free.
What I see here [in prison], I don’t see anybody who could be a threat,” he said from behind bars in his cell as his fellow inmates looked on.
Guards carried clubs and wore balaclavas to conceal their identities from the prisoners, fearful that their families could face retribution in the case of a prison break.
