“Your prisons have been dissolved,” Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa proclaimed during his speech at the launch ceremony of the country’s new, post-Assad visual identity on July 3. But even as he hailed the “victory of the revolution” and the emptying of the former regime’s prisons, prisoners of conscience continued to languish in northwestern Syria—held in the prisons of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the faction al-Sharaa led in Idlib. 

Since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, the banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir Bangladesh (HTB) has taken advantage of weak interim governance to openly campaign for its legalization,