How Sednaya’s liberation exposed decades of systematic torture under Syria’s Assad regime

Special How Sednaya’s liberation exposed decades of systematic torture under Syria’s Assad regime
Thousands of Syrians flooded the gates of the infamous facility near Damascus. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 12 December 2024
Follow

How Sednaya’s liberation exposed decades of systematic torture under Syria’s Assad regime

How Sednaya’s liberation exposed decades of systematic torture under Syria’s Assad regime
  • Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham captured the infamous regime jail on Dec. 8 after a dramatic 10-day campaign to oust Bashar Assad
  • Built in the 1980s, Sednaya became a symbol of state terror, with rights groups calling it a ‘human slaughterhouse’

DUBAI/LONDON: As jubilation spread across Syria following the overthrow of Bashar Assad on Dec. 8 after 13 years of civil war, Sednaya prison — a name synonymous with unspeakable horrors — finally fell into opposition hands.

Thousands of Syrians flooded the gates of the infamous facility near Damascus on Monday, desperate for news of loved ones who had vanished into the prison’s labyrinthine depths, many of them decades ago.

For years, Sednaya had been a black hole of despair, where political prisoners, activists and regime critics were detained, tortured and often executed.

Built in the 1980s under the rule of Assad’s father, Hafez, Sednaya began as a military prison but quickly morphed into a symbol of state terror.




A woman looks at a cell inside Sednaya prison, known as a slaughterhouse under Syria’s Bashar al-Assad rule. (Reuters)

Human rights groups have described it as a “human slaughterhouse,” a moniker reflecting the industrial-scale torture and execution that defined its operations.

Former detainees recount harrowing tales of abuse within its walls. Testimonies shared with Amnesty International, the rights monitor, detailed how prisoners were beaten, sexually assaulted and left to die of untreated wounds and diseases in squalid, overcrowded cells.

Others faced mass hangings after sham trials that lasted only minutes. Between 2011 and 2015, Amnesty estimates that up to 13,000 people were executed. The methods of torture were both medieval and methodical, including beatings, stabbings, electric shocks and starvation.

The horrors extended beyond death. The US has previously accused the Assad regime of using a crematorium at Sednaya to dispose of bodies, while surviving detainees described “confession” protocols involving sadistic torture.

On Sunday, Sednaya’s gates were forced open by opposition fighters from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham after a 10-day campaign led by opposition chief Abu Mohammed Al-Golani that toppled the Assad regime.

Thousands of detainees spilled out of the jail, some barely able to crawl after years of abuse. Videos circulated online showed women, children and elderly prisoners emerging from filthy cells, their emaciated forms bearing witness to the atrocities they had endured.

One video showed hundreds of traumatized women emerging from filthy cells, among them a three-year-old child and scores of teenage girls.




People look at pictures of bodies believed to be of prisoners from Sednaya prison. (Reuters)

Among the freed prisoners was Ragheed Al-Tatari, a former Syrian air force pilot imprisoned for 43 years after refusing to bomb civilians during the 1982 Hama massacre. Al-Tatari’s survival shocked even those accustomed to Sednaya’s grim history.

Another video circulating online showed an elderly lady in a squalid cell. The unidentified woman was only capable of laughing and repeating what the rebels told her, “the regime fell, the regime fell, the regime fell,” through her laughter.

Like her, countless prisoners seem to have lost their minds and are unable to comprehend what is happening.




Men dressed in Syrian army uniforms using shovels to bury alive a man they accuse in the video as being a citizen journalist. (Youtube video)

Others emerged from their incarceration desperate to learn the fate of their loved ones outside. A QudsN clip circulating on social media shows a man who, on being released, immediately went to visit the graves of his children, who had reportedly been killed by the regime.

Tragically, not all inmates survived long enough to see liberation.

The decomposing body of activist Mazen Hamadeh, who had traveled the world detailing the horrors he had endured during a previous stint in the regime’s dungeons before being lured back to Syria in 2021 under false promises of security, was found inside.




Members of the Syrian civil defence group, known as the White Helmets, search for prisoners underground. (Reuters)

He bore signs of recent blunt-force trauma.

For many Syrians, the fall of Sednaya has been bittersweet. Thousands remain unaccounted for, and families desperate for closure have scoured its grounds for clues.

Volunteers from the Syrian civil defense, known as the White Helmets, armed with maps and sniffer dogs, have searched for hidden cells and underground chambers. Despite rumors of secret detention areas, they reported finding no evidence of additional prisoners.

Sednaya’s facilities reveal the systematic cruelty that defined the Assad regime. Surveillance rooms with wall-to-wall monitors allowed guards to oversee detainees at all times.

Paraphernalia of torture, including ropes for hanging and devices for crushing bodies, were found in abundance. Mass graves and decomposing bodies near the Harasta hospital — where corpses were sent from Sednaya — underscore the scale of atrocities.




Despite overwhelming evidence, Bashar Assad consistently denied allegations of abuse. (Reuters)

The “red wing” housed political prisoners, subjected to the worst abuses. Survivors describe being denied water, beaten into unconsciousness, and forced to relieve themselves in their cells.

Inmates were often forbidden from making noise, even during torture. Every morning, guards collected the dead for burial in unmarked graves, recording causes of death as “heart failure” or “respiratory issues.”

As the White Helmets and opposition fighters continued to make their way into Sednaya to ensure no cell had been left unopened, they came across several decomposed bodies and others that had been partially dissolved in acid.




The horrors extended beyond death. (AFP)

Sednaya’s reputation as a site of systemic abuse predates Syria’s civil war. In the 1980s, it became a repository for Islamists the regime had once encouraged to fight US forces in Iraq but later deemed threats.

Following the 2011 Arab uprisings, the prison’s role expanded dramatically. Protesters, journalists, aid workers and students were detained en masse, many never to be seen again.

The prison’s practices bear the fingerprints of Alois Brunner, a Nazi war criminal who trained Syrian intelligence officers in interrogation and torture techniques.


Once a high-ranking Gestapo officer who oversaw the deportation of more than 128,000 Jews to death camps during the Second World War, Austrian-born Brunner was on the run until he was offered protection by Hafez Assad.

Assad refused on multiple occasions to extradite Brunner to stand trial in Austria and Germany in the 1980s, but later came to see him as a burden and an embarrassment to his rule.

In the mid-1990s, Hafez ordered Brunner’s “indefinite” imprisonment in the same squalor and misery the former Nazi officer had taught Syrian jailors to inflict on their prisoners. He died in Damascus in 2001 aged 89.




The White Helmets, armed with maps and sniffer dogs, have searched for hidden cells and underground chambers. (Reuters)


Despite overwhelming evidence, Bashar Assad consistently denied allegations of abuse. “You can forge anything these days. It is the fake news era,” he told Yahoo News in 2017 when confronted with Amnesty’s findings.

His denials, however, are contradicted by testimonies and reports such as the Caesar files — a cache of 53,000 images taken in Syria’s prisons and military hospitals and smuggled out by a defector — which document the regime’s crimes in horrifying detail.

On Monday, Fadel Abdul Ghany, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, broke down in tears during a televised interview when asked about the fate of missing detainees. “It is most probable that those who have been arbitrarily disappeared by the regime are dead,” he said.

Opinion

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)

Abdul Ghany later posted on social media: “I deeply regret having to share this distressing announcement, but I feel it is my responsibility to share it.”

Syrian activist Wafa Ali Mustafa, whose father was forcibly disappeared in 2013, said on X that she has been searching “through harrowing videos, clinging to any chance” that he might be among the survivors.




A man holds a noose found inside Saydnaya prison. (Reuters)

The prison’s fall has prompted calls for accountability. “The blood that was spilled here cannot just run. They must be held to account,” Radwan Eid, a former detainee, told Reuters news agency.

Sednaya is also not the only regime jail where such abuses are claimed to have taken place. There are multiple facilities across the country, including Mezzeh military prison, Tedmor, and Fereh Falasteen, from which evidence of further horrors are likely to emerge.

The challenge now lies in preserving evidence and ensuring that Sednaya’s perpetrators face trial.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and other organizations have urged the armed opposition to protect records and prevent further destruction. However, looting and chaos at Sednaya has complicated these efforts.




A uniform of a member of the Syrian army hangs from a wire fence outside Sednaya prison. (Reuters)

As Bashar Assad and his acolytes have been granted asylum in Russia, it seems unlikely the deposed president and others in the upper echelons of his regime will stand trial for their role in the crimes perpetrated at Sednaya.

While the road to justice may be long, Sednaya’s liberation represents a turning point. For survivors and families, it offers a rare opportunity to confront the truth and honor the memories of those lost.

The dismantling of Sednaya’s imprisonment machinery is a symbolic step toward rebuilding the nation and serves as a reminder of the resilience of those who survived, and the enduring need for accountability.

 


UN says no aid convoy looting in Gaza since ceasefire

UN says no aid convoy looting in Gaza since ceasefire
Updated 3 sec ago
Follow

UN says no aid convoy looting in Gaza since ceasefire

UN says no aid convoy looting in Gaza since ceasefire
  • Throughout the conflict in Gaza, the UN has denounced obstacles restricting the flow and distribution of aid into the battered Palestinian territory
GENEVA: The United Nations on Tuesday said that there had been no reports of aid convoys being looted in war-ravaged Gaza since a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect.
“These two first days of entry: there have been no records of looting or attacks against aid workers,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.
During the 15-month war, “there has been a sad, tragic history of looting happening,” he said.
“The past two days, we have not seen any looting. We have not seen any organized armed gangs or groups, whatever you want to call them, attacking the aid that is coming in.”
Throughout the conflict in Gaza, the UN has denounced obstacles restricting the flow and distribution of aid into the battered Palestinian territory.
Desperately-needed humanitarian aid has begun to flow into Gaza after Israel and Hamas on Sunday conducted the first exchange of hostages for prisoners agreed under the terms of the ceasefire.
More than 900 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Monday, the United Nations said.
The day the deal came into force, 630 trucks entered Gaza.
Laerke said that aid organizations were eager to “maximize delivery through this opening. Hunger is widespread. People are homeless.”
The war has devastated much of the Gaza Strip and displaced the vast majority of its population of 2.4 million, many of them multiple times.
Laerke said that it was important to see the issue of looting “in the wider picture as to why were these gangs there in the first place.”
With only a trickle of aid coming into the territory before the ceasefire deal, he pointed out that “whatever came into Gaza... had extremely high value.”
“So there were incentives to do that (looting). Now, of course, the more aid that comes in... those incentives will probably not be there as much.”

Israeli minister says he welcomes Trump’s reversal of US sanctions on settlers

Israeli minister says he welcomes Trump’s reversal of US sanctions on settlers
Updated 48 min 47 sec ago
Follow

Israeli minister says he welcomes Trump’s reversal of US sanctions on settlers

Israeli minister says he welcomes Trump’s reversal of US sanctions on settlers
  • Trump’s decision is a reversal of a major policy action by former President Joe Biden’s administration

JERUSALEM: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed US President Donald Trump’s reversal of sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The pro-settler Smotrich, in a message to Trump on Tuesday, called the move an “expression of your deep connection to the Jewish people and our historical right to our land.”
Trump’s decision is a reversal of a major policy action by former President Joe Biden’s administration that had imposed sanctions on numerous Israeli settler individuals and entities, freezing their US assets and generally barring Americans from dealing with them.
“These sanctions were a severe act of foreign interference in the internal affairs of the State of Israel, undermining democratic principles and the mutual relationship between the two friendly nations,” Smotrich said.
Smotrich added that Israel looked forward to “continued fruitful cooperation to strengthen its national security, expand settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel, and strengthen Israel’s position in the world.”
US sanctions on settlers were imposed after the Biden administration repeatedly urged the Israeli government to take action to hold extremists to account for actions that Washington believes set back hopes for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Palestinians want as the core of an independent state. It has built Jewish settlements there that most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes this and cites historical and Biblical ties to the land.


Over 900 aid trucks enter Gaza on 2nd day of truce — UN

Over 900 aid trucks enter Gaza on 2nd day of truce — UN
Updated 21 January 2025
Follow

Over 900 aid trucks enter Gaza on 2nd day of truce — UN

Over 900 aid trucks enter Gaza on 2nd day of truce — UN
  • On Sunday, the day the ceasefire came into force, 630 trucks entered Gaza
  • 42-day truce is meant to enable surge of sorely needed aid for Gaza after 15 months

UNITED NATIONS, United States: More than 900 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Monday, the United Nations said, exceeding the daily target outlined in the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
“Humanitarian aid continues to move into the Gaza Strip as part of a prepared surge to increase support to survivors,” the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) said.
“Today, 915 trucks crossed into Gaza, according to information received through engagement with Israeli authorities and the guarantors for the ceasefire agreement.”
Throughout conflict in Gaza, the UN has denounced obstacles restricting the flow and distribution of aid into the battered Palestinian territory.
On Sunday, the day the ceasefire came into force, 630 trucks entered Gaza.
An initial 42-day truce between Israel and Hamas is meant to enable a surge of sorely needed aid for Gaza after 15 months of war.
The ceasefire agreement calls for 600 trucks to cross into Gaza per day.


Fire at Turkiye ski resort hotel kills 10, injures 32

Fire at Turkiye ski resort hotel kills 10, injures 32
Updated 21 January 2025
Follow

Fire at Turkiye ski resort hotel kills 10, injures 32

Fire at Turkiye ski resort hotel kills 10, injures 32
  • The blaze at the 12-story Grand Kartal hotel, which has wooden cladding, started at 3:27 a.m.
  • The resort is located on top of a mountain range about 170km northwest of Ankara

ISTANBUL: A fire engulfed a hotel at the popular Kartalkaya ski resort in northwestern Turkiye early Tuesday, killing 10 people died and injuring 32 others, the interior minister said.
The blaze at the 12-story Grand Kartal hotel, which has wooden cladding, started at 3:27 a.m. (0027 GMT), Ali Yerlikaya said on X.
Private NTV broadcaster said three people died after jumping from the hotel’s windows.
The resort is located on top of a mountain range about 170 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of the capital Ankara.
The fire, which is believed to have started in the restaurant at around midnight, spread quickly. It was not immediately clear what caused it.
Television footage showed huge plumes of smoke rising into the sky with a snowcapped mountain behind the hotel.
Part of it backs onto a cliff, making it harder for firefighters to tackle the blaze.
Local media said 237 people were staying at the hotel, where the occupancy rate was between 80 and 90 percent due to the school holidays.
Those evacuated were rehoused in nearby hotels.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said six prosecutors had been allocated to investigate the blaze.
The health, interior and culture ministers are expected to visit the site later in the day.


Trump ‘not confident’ Gaza deal will hold

Trump ‘not confident’ Gaza deal will hold
Updated 21 January 2025
Follow

Trump ‘not confident’ Gaza deal will hold

Trump ‘not confident’ Gaza deal will hold
  • Donald Trump however believes Hamas had been ‘weakened’ in the war

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Monday he was not confident a ceasefire deal in Gaza would hold, despite trumpeting his diplomacy to secure it ahead of his inauguration.

Asked by a reporter as he returned to the White House whether the two sides would maintain the truce and move on in the agreement, Trump said, “I’m not confident.”

“That’s not our war; it’s their war. But I’m not confident,” Trump said.

Trump, however, said that he believed Hamas had been “weakened” in the war that began with its unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

“I looked at a picture of Gaza. Gaza is like a massive demolition site,” Trump said.

The property tycoon turned populist politician said that Gaza could see a “fantastic” reconstruction if the plan moves ahead.

“It’s a phenomenal location on the sea — best weather. You know, everything’s good. It’s like, some beautiful things could be done with it,” he said.

Israel and Hamas on Sunday began implementing a ceasefire deal that included the exchange of hostages and prisoners.

The plan was originally outlined by then president Joe Biden in May and was pushed through after unusual joint diplomacy by Biden and Trump envoys.

Trump, while pushing for the deal, has also made clear he will steadfastly support Israel.

In one of his first acts, he revoked sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank imposed by the Biden administration over attacks against Palestinians.