Fighters from the anti-government rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) stormed the dreaded Saydnaya prison on Sunday (Dec 8), amid a lightning strike in Damascus, Syria that toppled the Bashar al-Assad regime.
Thousands of detainees, mainly political prisoners, who have been languishing since the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011, were freed from what Amnesty International described as a “human slaughterhouse” in 2017.
All about Saydnaya prison
Saydnaya prison, also known as Sednaya, was established in the 1980s in a small town about 30 kilometers north of the capital Damascus. Attempts to build a prison began in 1978 BBC Reportedly, Saydnaya was administered by the Syrian military police for decades, with the first detainees arriving in 1987.
In its 2017 report titled “Human Slaughterhouse,” Amnesty International provided an in-depth understanding of the prison for the first time, relying on the testimony of former prisoners to generate a 3D model.
According to the report, the prison had two detention centers: the “Red Building” and the “White Building”. Each center has a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 people. The L-shaped red building housed civilians, most of whom had been arrested since the start of the 2011 civil war.
The White Building, described by former guards as a “Mercedes wheel” due to its shape, is primarily staffed by Syrian army personnel believed to be disloyal to the regime. It showed “a central, circular hub with three long, straight corridors leading out from this hub”.
According to the report, suspected members of the Islamist group were held in the Red Building until 2011, when they were released or transferred to other prisons. In the last decade, it was used to incarcerate political prisoners believed to be critical of the regime or involved in rebellion. Prisoners were rarely released from any of the buildings, while those who were released were often forced to pay bribes.
2022 Report entitled Association of Detainees and the Missing of Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) “Administrative Structure and Organizational Relations of Sednaya Prison” Saidnaya was guarded by three levels of security, tasked with guarding the prison and supervising and disciplining the incarcerated.
Why was Saydnaya called “Human Slaughterhouse”?
Amnesty estimates that 5,000 to 13,000 people were “unjustly killed” in Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015, while thousands more have been executed since then. While some rights groups have described Saydnaya as a death camp, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organization, estimates that 30,000 prisoners were killed in Saidnaya alone.
Survivors have detailed accounts of prison transfers after midnight from the red and white buildings to the designated “hanging room” in the basement of the white building. According to BBCBlindfolded prisoners were placed on a platform one meter high with 10 gallows from which they would be hanged. According to Amnesty’s report, the room was expanded in 2012 and a second platform with 20 additional fans was installed. The room also had three cells, and 100 prisoners would be taken to execution.
The prospect of survival was just as bleak, as a 2024 UN report titled “The Syrian government’s detention system as a tool of violent repression” described as prisons. Extraordinarily dirtyViolent, and deadly to its prisoners, who died from inhumane detention conditions, severe beatings, torture, disease, starvation, and dehydration.” Some prisoners were forced to drink their own urine to survive, and prisoners were packed into overcrowded cells.
In 2017, the US State Department alleged that the crematorium was built to bury thousands of executed prisoners. Stuart Jones, then Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, said that one of the buildings in Saidnaya was modified to “support” a possible crematorium.
Have “hidden underground cells” been uncovered?
In a statement released on Monday, the volunteer organization Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, said it had completed a search operation for “possible remaining prisoners in potentially unknown secret cells and basements within the notorious Sednaya prison”.
Sunday’s breakthrough raised concerns about people trapped underground and “suffocating to death” in Saidnaya. According to BBCThe Damascus countryside governorate appealed on social media to former members of the Assad administration to “provide the codes to the electronic underground doors to the rebel forces”.
The White Helmets said it had deployed five teams to the prison, with guides familiar with its layout. These included wall breaching experts, teams to open iron gates, trained dogs, and medical responders.
On Monday, the group said it had found “no evidence of undiscovered secret cells or basements” at the prison.
The group also asked to avoid spreading false information on social media.