The last time I came to Homs, I crossed the border from Lebanon on the back of a motorbike.

I recall ducking beneath somebody’s washing hanging on a line and crisscrossing through a minefield, the driver shouting: “Don’t worry, Habibi, I do it all the time!”

This time, I drove past the burnt-out hulks of Syrian tanks and grad missile launchers through a once-feared, but now destroyed and abandoned, checkpoint – and into a free city.

On a roundabout, where a huge statue of Bashar al Assad used to dominate the city centre, men, women and children were singing, laughing and taking selfies.

The statue, like the regime, has been toppled.

During my last trip to Homs, I couldn’t even approach the city centre because it was controlled by the regime.

I was confined to a district known as Baba Amr, the home of the Homs uprising against Assad that started in 2011 and which became the scene of unbridled slaughter in 2012.

And now, coming back has been one of the single most moving experiences of my life.

The regime was powerful in Homs because it destroyed the opposition. Some of the most appalling attacks on civilians happened here.

Barely a building in Baba Amr was left undamaged in a campaign of blanket bombing and targeted attacks by the Syrian Army in 2012. It’s not been rebuilt but people are returning now, living amid the rubble.

The fall of Assad is being greeted here as the start of a new life.

“We feel we’ve been born again,” Maher Hassan, a resident of Baba Amr, told me.

“I went to the square, and it felt like I was seeing it for the first time, I used to pass it all the time, but there was a celebration and when I looked over, I felt like I had never seen it before.”

People are now on the streets, free of the fear of being arrested, imprisoned and murdered. That was an everyday threat, and these scenes of ordinary life just didn’t exist in Baba Amr since 2011 – until now.

At every corner, I was stopped and surrounded by people telling us of family members either murdered by the regime or still missing.

As I was interviewing two women, who were describing the arrest and gruesome murders of so many of their male relatives, a man suddenly emerged from the crowd and began to hug them. The women started to wail.

Ahmad Hasan Nheimy was a protester at the start of the uprising in 2011, who was jailed, and then fled the country after release. He has finally been able to return home for the first time in nearly 14 years.

“I still can’t believe it, I can’t believe, I’m saying hello to everyone still, I’ve seen my mother for the first time in 14 years, my house is destroyed,” he said through tears.

“They used to arrest and report protesters, there were spies within, and I got a notice that my name was on a list, and my name was distributed to soldiers at checkpoints, so I couldn’t cross checkpoints anymore.”

I asked him if he thought he would ever be able to come back.

“It crossed my mind that I would never come home, because whenever we crossed the borders, we thought we would be slaughtered or put in prison, and in prison we would be tortured,” he replied.

In those early days of the uprising, the “media centre” – the top three floors of a house in Baba Amr – was the very heart of what the activists who manned it believed was to be a revolution.

We were welcomed there and the movement – all young men and women – looked after us. They linked us up with the swelling protest marches that took to the streets every night.

The Free Syrian Army was still in its infancy, and there were very few of them, with hardly any weapons. But they gave the protesters as much protection as they could.

One of those was Abu Firas, who was just 22 at the time. He had deserted the Syrian Army to join the FSA.

I met Abu Firas and, though we are both older, the memories from that time were vivid.

He wanted to show me around the streets where we took refuge and buildings where they had tried to hold off Assad’s forces.

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We ended up outside the “media centre”. In early 2012, the building and streets around it were targeted by the regime and its rockets.

During one attack, The Sunday Times foreign correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed. With Colvin was photographer Paul Conroy, who spoke to Sky’s Yalda Hakim on Wednesday night.

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What I learnt was that Abu Firas was one of those who had tried to save Marie and Remi. He also helped their colleagues who had been badly injured in the direct, targeted attack on the “media centre”.

“They were heroes to us, we will never forget them,” Abu Firas told me. “They told the world what was happening, they are famous here, they will forever be part of our revolution.”

Countless civilians and activists have died in Baba Amr and across Syria and these journalists would never have wanted to be at the centre of any story.

But here, in Baba Amr, their reporting was the link to the outside world and their courage is part of folklore.

There were times I thought I would never see normal life in Homs, or even visit it again, but so many things have changed.

Syria is free now from Assad’s long reign of terror.

The future is far from clear of course, but the present feels very special in Baba Amr.

Inside Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison, dubbed the “human slaughterhouse”, Sky News saw the conditions that people were kept in until the fall of the Assad regime.

Sky News lead world presenter Yalda Hakim went inside the infamous facility and walked the halls once stalked by Bashar al Assad’s enforcers.

Human rights groups have reported on the site north of Damascus for years, warning of what has been going on.

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But until rebel forces stormed the Syrian capital earlier this month, leading to the prisoners walking free, it was impossible for journalists to freely go inside.

Now, thousands of Syrians have flocked to the site this week in search of loved ones who went missing, and Hakim has reported on what she’s seen in the halls and cells of the prison.

‘Bags of faeces and urine’

“There are almost two dozen prisons scattered across this country, but this is the one that really is linked to just the brutality and torture of this regime,” Hakim said, speaking outside the facility near the capital Damascus.

“I was walking earlier from cell to cell, and I could just see the horrifying conditions that people were kept in.

“They had plastic bags full of faeces and urine because people weren’t able to go to the bathroom – if they were allowed to go to a handful of toilets here, they were only given a few seconds, so they were relieving themselves and dumping the plastic bags in the corner of the cells.”

Walking past nooses, she added that prisoners were detained, tortured and sometimes even executed inside.

“Apparently, every day, 50 people were brought out and told that they were going to be taken to some kind of civilian prison when they were brought out here to be hung,” she added.

‘Crushing machine’

Heading into one area they were told was a torture chamber, Hakim said it appeared to have been sound-proofed and had a fan installed – possibly to distribute cold air, gas, or heat into the room.

Afterwards, she reported from next to an alleged “crushing machine” which prisoners were said to have been forced into and crushed to death.

Walking around the outside of the prison, she said: “There were rumours that Assad’s guards had created a labyrinth of tunnels where they had buried some of the prisoners deep beneath the ground.

“As you walk around the outside of the prisons you see holes everywhere where people have tried to dig the ground up to see if they could find anyone.”

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‘Forgotten who they were’

Some inmates put into solitary confinement were said to have forgotten who they were.

“When the rebels came and took over this prison, they said that people couldn’t even remember who they were,” Hakim added.

“They couldn’t remember their names when they went into these prisons, the prison guards told them that they were a number, not a name.

“So many people had even forgotten who they were because they’d been kept in there for so long.”

She continued: “They were tortured. They were brutalised. They were sexually assaulted and abused. They were electrocuted.”

While human rights groups have said they want to preserve the prison’s documents to maintain evidence of what went on inside, Hakim said that the families who rushed here have gone through and taken them all “because they want to find out if their loved ones were actually at this very notorious prison”.

Saudi Arabia has been confirmed as the host nation for the 2034 football World Cup.

Also confirmed were the hosts for the 2030 World Cup, which was awarded to six countries and will take place across three continents to celebrate 100 years of the tournament.

Saudi Arabia was the sole bidder for the 2034 competition. Its host status was confirmed on Wednesday after an online meeting of the 211 members of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA).

The members confirmed the unchallenged bids by acclamation – simply clapping during the virtual meeting led by FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

As well as the World Cup, Saudi Arabia is hosting football’s 2027 Asian Cup, the 2029 Asian Winter Games and the 2034 Asian Games. It also has long-term ambitions to host more major events, including the Women’s World Cup, according to Sky Sports News.

The 2030 tournament will be led by co-hosts Spain and Portugal in Europe, and Morocco in North Africa. Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina will each hold an opening match to mark 100 years since the first World Cup, which took place in Uruguay and was won by the hosts.

Before both of them, the US, Canada and Mexico will co-host the 2026 World Cup.

England’s Football Association (FA) supported the plans for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups, Sky Sports News understands.

‘Blatant sportswashing’

Saudi Arabia first published its bid for the World Cup back in August after FIFA controversially fast-tracked the process for hosting the tournaments in 2030 and 2034.

But, the plan for the 2034 tournament has led to criticism from activist groups, who argue that Saudi laws will not protect workers overseas.

The tournament will require the construction of eight new stadiums, for a total of 15 hosting venues, plus the addition of 175,000 hotel rooms, which will rely heavily on migrant labour.

One of the stadiums is planned in a city that doesn’t yet exist.

Critics of FIFA also insist a Saudi-based World Cup risks a repeat of the rights abuses seen during a decade of similar preparations for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Labour MP Andy Slaughter said the decision was “complete sportswashing” and last month, Amnesty International and the Sport & Rights Alliance called on FIFA to halt the process of picking Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2034 tournament unless major human rights reforms are announced before the vote.

Amnesty International accused the country of “blatant sportswashing” – the practice of using sports to improve a country’s or organisation’s reputation and often to distract from negative actions.

A Stonewall spokesperson said LGBTQ+ fans would feel unsafe at the prospect of attending the 2034 tournament.

‘We’ve come a long way’

Hitting back at criticism, Hammad Albalawi, head of Saudi Arabia’s bid, said at the beginning of December that the country has made significant progress in human rights while aiming to attract “more fans than ever” to the event.

He said Saudi Arabia is committed to transforming its social and economic landscape under Vision 2030 – a government programme announced back in 2016.

“We have come a long way and there’s still a long way to go. Our principle is to develop something that is right for us. Our journey started in 2016, not because of the World Cup bid,” Mr Albalawi told the Reuters news agency.

“We’ve launched initiatives granting employees the freedom to move between employers. Documents of these employees are now uploaded into government systems, ensuring they have rights within their contracts.”

He added that the tournament would be held in a “safe and family-friendly environment” regardless of the sale of alcohol – which is banned in the country.

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“I think today what you see in Saudi Arabia is an environment that is family-friendly, safe and secure – something that people can actually enjoy on and off the pitch,” Mr Albalawi said.

“Our aim and aspiration is to bring more teams and more fans into one place than ever before.”

FIFA previously praised the Saudi bid in an in-house evaluation, noting that the 48-team, 104-game tournament offers “significant opportunities for positive human rights impact”.

However, it added that Saudi Arabia must invest “significant effort and time” to comply with international standards.