“Saydnaya is a prison where you wish to die as many times as you can count,” said Omar Alshogre, a former prisoner in Syria and a human rights activist. “They let you suffer very slowly. They want you to be broken, physically and mentally, long before you die.”
The Saydnaya prison, dubbed a “human slaughterhouse” by Amnesty International, for decades, symbolized the terrors inflicted on the people of Syria by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Behind its closed walls, many lives of innocent civilians were taken by mass killings, systemic violence, torture, sexual assault, and deliberate acts of cruelty. It was a notorious tool used by Bashar al-Assad to quell political dissent and to keep his hold on political power.
Overview of Saydnaya Prison
Located in a small town about 30 km north of Damascus and established in the early 1980s, Saydnaya Prison is the darkest place in Syria. The prisoners at Saydnaya included civilian detainees, anti-government rebels, and political prisoners. The prison consists of two main buildings, the main cell block known as the Red Building and the White Building.
The White Building, L-shaped, was initially built to hold military officers and troops who were suspected of being disloyal to Assad’s regime; after the 2011 Syrian Revolution, it was emptied and was home to an execution room with multiple nooses. The Red Building, Y-shaped, was the main prison built for the opponents of the regime, mainly comprising members of Islamist groups initially. According to former prisoners, detainees in the Red Building were frequently subjected to extreme cruelty and barbarism.
According to the rebel fighters, each wing specialized in a different form of torture. Since 2011, thousands have been killed, often without a fair trial. About 157,634 Syrians were arrested between March 2011 and August 2024. Of this number, 5,274 were children and 10,221 were women. Syrian rebels have discovered a chilling “Book of Death” with the names of 30,000 people executed in Assad’s slaughterhouse jail between 2011 and 2018, as a result of torture, lack of food, health care, and necessities, and another 500 detainees have been executed between 2018 and 2021.
The US Department of State issued a report in 2017 claiming that the Syrian government has constructed a crematorium at the prison to dispose of the remains of thousands of murdered prisoners, and at least 50 prisoners were executed in a single day.
Documentation of Atrocities
The inmates of Saydnaya Prison were not allowed to have contact with the outside world. The prisoners were subjected to constant torture, beaten on the genitals, and forced to rape, beat, and kill one another. Omer al-Shogre, a former detainee and human rights activist, recalled the torture he had faced during his time in prison. He claimed in his interview that the prison guard once gave him a screwdriver to wound his cousin’s back, and his cousin, Bashir, was given a pistol to shoot Omer. Both of them refused to follow the guards’ commands, which resulted in a bullet striking Omer’s hip.
Abu Khalid, a former detainee, recounted the brutal treatment the prisoners had to endure. The prison guard used to have a long green stick for hitting the prisoners, which they would call “Abrahamic green.” After beating the inmates, they would ask for a stretcher, which was referred to as the “yellow one,” which meant the death of the prisoner.
Many of the prisoners that have been rescued are in poor health; the majority of them have been tortured to the point of losing their memory and sense of identity. The images of plastic bags filled with feces and urine have resurfaced on social media, showing that detainees were given seconds to use the latrines, forcing them to relieve themselves and dump the plastic bags in the corner of their cells. They were given spoiled food, and thus all these added to the worsening of their health conditions and the development of serious health infections.
According to the survivors, the guards in the prison enforced strict silence, and none of them were allowed to talk. They would rather write on the walls when they couldn’t speak. Handwritten inscriptions were scrawled all over the cell walls. Tab, Khadni (Enough already, just take me) was one of the messages.
The bodies of tortured Syrians in regime prisons were recorded with only a military branch number, a detainee number, and a death number assigned by a forensic doctor—no names or certificates. Caesar, a military forensic photographer for 13 years, was conscripted in 2011 and assigned to take photographs of detainees who had been slain while in detention. Sami, his companion, smuggled these photographs abroad, sharing them with international lawyers and the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAMCD). The pictures, which were made public later on, showed signs of severe torture, starvation, and mutilation.
Current Status
As the insurgents swept across Syria to bring an end to Assad’s notorious regime, they broke into the prisons and security facilities to rescue the political prisoners. They witnessed chaotic scenes inside the prison. On hearing the news, the people quickly flocked to the prison in search of their loved ones. Thousands of families are still searching for their loved ones lost in the chaos of war or buried in as-yet-undiscovered mass graves.
Rumors have been circulating that there have been underground sections of the prison where the detainees have been trapped, and there is no access to them. The White Helmets, Syria’s Civil Defense force, continued to search but finally suspended operations on Tuesday after finding no more prisoners. A statement was released by the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, which stated that the last liberated prisoner had been released. The chief leader of the rebels who overthrew Assad’s regime declared that anyone involved in the torturing and killing of innocent detainees would be hunted down.
The Saydnaya Prison in Syria is a stark reminder to the world of what uncontrolled and unchecked power and cruelty can lead to. The survivors carry physical and emotional wounds from Saydnaya. Justice is still awaited for the survivors and the innocent souls who have been massacred in Saydnaya.
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Ruqayya Yar Muhammad is a fresh graduate of political science from the University of Peshawar and a keen enthusiast of current and international affairs.