For 50 years Taha Tadmori had a window to the surveillance complex of the Assad regime. As Syria starts a new chapter, he recalls the horrors he witnessed and the family he lost

The three floors and subterranean prison of the Homs security directorate have loomed over 65-year-old Taha Tadmori’s daily life since he was a teenager. His family often shut their window blinds and doors in an attempt to block out the constant sound of screams and cries of pain from the facility’s basement prison, loud enough to reach their third-floor apartment overlooking it.

The moustachioed man with a gentle smile was 15 when he watched the construction of the neighbouring building that would later terrorise him and other people in Homs.