Syria has exchanged a vile dictator for an uncertain future

THERE WAS joy and horror and anguish all at once. Many of the detainees freed from Saidnaya, the most notorious prison in Syria, were husks: skeletal frames, vacant stares. They staggered out of cells where dozens of people had been packed into reeking, pitch-black chambers. On the walls of one someone had scribbled in Arabic, “Take me, already.”