After insurgents toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad this month, many senior officials and members of his dreaded intelligence and security services appear to have melted away. Activists say some of them have managed to flee the country while others went to hide in their hometowns.

For more than five decades, the Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron grip, locking up those who dared question their power in the country's notorious prisons, where rights groups say inmates were regularly tortured or killed.