Earth took 43 revolutions around the Sun for him to see the light in Syria

Ragheed Ahmad al-Tatari, described by human rights activists as one of the world’s longest-serving political prisoners, walked out of a prison on Sunday after the opposition entered Damascus, forcing Bashar al-Assad to flee.

Al-Tatari spent 43 years behind bars in various Syrian prisons. The opposition fighters freed hundreds of people who had lingered in notorious jails for years without any communication with the outside world. Al-Tatari was freed from Adra Central Prison in Damascus.

A former Syrian air force pilot, his imprisonment began in 1981 after one of his colleagues defected to Jordan in a fighter jet. Tatari was accused of helping him escape.

After spending two years in solitary confinement at Mezzeh Prison, al-Tatari he was transferred to the notorious Tadmor (Palmyra) Prison, where he remained until 2000.

He was then moved to another infamous facility, Sednaya Prison, and in 2011 to Adra Central Prison in Damascus. The military court that sentenced him to life imprisonment took just one minute to decide his fate.

Stories of the torture prisons are a constant in the Syrian consciousness.

The United Nations has maintained that government arrests in Syria “have been deliberately instrumentalised to instil fear among the civilian population.”

During his time in prison, al-Tatari developed an extraordinary talent as an artist and sculptor, creating intricate pieces from bread crumbs, sugar, citric acid, and olive seeds.

He also organised chess tournaments, crafting the pieces from bread dough and drawing the board on a piece of cloth.

Vail, his son, now in his 40s, shared his memories of growing up without his father. His mother him that his father was simply "gone."

"Every time I saw a stranger walking alone, I thought, 'Maybe it’s my dad.' I would go to the door and wait. But nothing ever happened. After a few years, it became unbearable, and I stopped doing it," Vail said in an earlier interview.

Over the years, various versions of al-Tatari’s arrest have circulated, including claims that it was due to his refusal to bomb the Syrian city of Hama or his failure to report his colleagues’ desertion.

One of the versions that has been circulating on social media is that his "crime" was beating the then-regime president Hafez al-Assad's son Bassel in a horse race. By winning, he showed "disrespect" for the Assad family.

The Syrian Campaign, a human rights organisation that has studied his case, confirmed that he was the longest-serving political prisoner in Syria.