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)
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Updated 12 December 2024
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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.

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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.

 


Unexploded ordnance killing Syria’s children at ‘alarming rate’: UN

Unexploded ordnance killing Syria’s children at ‘alarming rate’: UN
Updated 14 January 2025
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Unexploded ordnance killing Syria’s children at ‘alarming rate’: UN

Unexploded ordnance killing Syria’s children at ‘alarming rate’: UN
  • UNICEF warned that Syria’s girls and boys “continue to suffer the brutal impact of unexploded ordnance at an alarming rate
  • UNICEF communications manager for emergencies Ricardo Pires said: “Across Syria, children face this lurking, often invisible, and extremely deadly threat“

GENEVA: More than 100 children were killed or wounded in Syria last month alone after setting off mines and other unexploded ordnance littering the country after nearly 14 years of civil war, the UN said Tuesday.
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF warned that Syria’s girls and boys “continue to suffer the brutal impact of unexploded ordnance at an alarming rate.”
Such ordnance, dubbed UXOs, are explosive weapons such as bombs, shells, grenades, land mines and cluster munitions, that did not explode when they were deployed and remain a risk, sometimes for decades.
In December alone, as Syria was rocked by dramatic political upheaval following the sudden ousting of strongman Bashar Assad, UNICEF said it received reports of 116 children killed or injured by UXOs.
That is “an average of nearly four per day,” UNICEF communications manager for emergencies Ricardo Pires told reporters in Geneva, speaking via videolink from Damascus, adding that “this is believed to be an underestimate.”
“Across Syria, children face this lurking, often invisible, and extremely deadly threat.”
Nearly 14 years of brutal civil war, which killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions, has left an estimated 324,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance scattered across Syria, Pires said.
“Over the past nine years, at least 422,000 incidents involving UXOs were reported in 14 governorates across the country,” he said, adding that half of those were “estimated to have ended in tragic child casualties.”
He warned that the danger had been worsened with renewed displacement since Islamist-led rebels last November 27 launched the offensive that would overthrow Assad just 11 days later.
Since then, he pointed out, “over a quarter of a million children were forced to flee their homes due to escalating conflict.”
“For these children, and those trying to return to their original areas, the peril of UXO is constant and unavoidable,” he said.
UNICEF stressed the need to dramatically scale up explosive clearance.
“It is imperative that immediate investment takes place to ensure the ground is safe and clear of explosives,” Pires said, warning that some five million children currently live in contaminated areas.
“It’s the main cause of child casualties in Syria right now,” he warned.
“Every step they take carries the risk of an unimaginable tragedy.”
UNICEF spokesman James Elder said an investment of only a few tens of millions of dollars would be enough to make a huge difference.
It “would save thousands of lives and will be an absolutely imperative part if Syria is to again become a middle income country,” he told reporters.
“It’s a very cheap price that needs to be paid.”


Second Israeli far-right minister opposes Gaza deal

Second Israeli far-right minister opposes Gaza deal
Updated 14 January 2025
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Second Israeli far-right minister opposes Gaza deal

Second Israeli far-right minister opposes Gaza deal

JERUSALEM: A key far-right member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Tuesday became the second minister to publicly oppose a Gaza truce deal but said he would not topple the ruling coalition.
“The deal is truly catastrophic,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said on his Telegram channel.
“This effectively erases the hard-won achievements of the war, which have been earned at the great cost of the blood of our soldiers in Gaza.
“It is a conscious decision to pay the price with the lives of many other Israeli citizens, who will, unfortunately, bear the burden of this deal,” Ben Gvir added.
Ben Gvir, an outspoken member of Netanyahu’s government, has steadfastly opposed halting the war in Gaza.
He is the second minister to publicly reject a deal being negotiated in Doha between Israel and Hamas through international mediators.
On Monday, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also opposed any agreement that would halt the war.
These stances highlight sharp divides in the ruling coalition.
Netanyahu could nonetheless muster enough support to pass the deal through his cabinet, even without their backing.
He is assured of receiving majority votes in the 34-member cabinet supporting the deal, even if Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who together control six ministers, vote against it.
Israel’s main opposition leader, Yair Lapid, has also publicly said he would back Netanyahu to ensure the government does not collapse if Ben Gvir and Smotrich withdraw.
“He doesn’t need them... I offered him a political safety net for a hostage deal,” Lapid said on Monday.
Ben Gvir said he and Smotrich had tried to block the deal for a year.
“Over the past year, through our political power, we have managed to block this deal from being executed time and again,” he said.
“However, new elements have since joined the government and now support the deal, leaving us no longer a decisive force.”
He urged Smotrich to join him in opposing what he described as a “disastrous deal.”
He said the two could make “a clear statement to the prime minister that if this deal proceeds, we will withdraw from the government.”
However, the two would not seek to bring down the government, he said.
“I emphasize that even if we find ourselves in the opposition, we will not topple Netanyahu,” he said.
“However, this step is our only chance to prevent the deal from being executed and to stop Israel’s capitulation to Hamas after more than a year of bloody war.”


Gaza, Lebanon conflicts see civilian casualties at highest point in over a decade

People stand next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in Gaza.
People stand next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in Gaza.
Updated 14 January 2025
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Gaza, Lebanon conflicts see civilian casualties at highest point in over a decade

People stand next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in Gaza.
  • Israeli military action responsible for more than half of all non-combatants killed or injured in bombings and explosions in 2024
  • Last year saw casualty figures increase globally by more than two-thirds, with airstrikes the leading cause of death and injury

LONDON: The number of civilian casualties worldwide caused by bombings or explosions during conflicts has reached its highest point in over a decade, driven in particular by Israel’s campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

The monitoring group Action on Armed Violence said it had identified 61,353 non-combatants killed or wounded in 2024, up 67 percent on 2023. Of those figures, 25,116 were fatalities, a 51 percent increase.

AOAV said Israeli military activity in Gaza and Lebanon was responsible for 55 percent of all civilians killed or wounded by explosions, at 33,910 people.

Gaza alone accounted for 39 percent of all casualties recorded, with 14,435 killed in explosions and 9,314 injured.

The civil war in Sudan has also contributed to the uptick in numbers, as well as 11,693 civilians killed or wounded by explosions in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Spikes in casualties between 2013 and 2017 were due to the conflict in Syria, but the 2024 total was more than double that previous high-water mark. 

The top cause of death and injury from explosions in 2024 was airstrikes — a tactic Israel has used extensively in Gaza and Lebanon.

The number of casualties caused this way more than doubled from 2023, with 30,804 people affected.

AOAV Executive Director Iain Overton said: “2024 has been a catastrophic year for civilians caught in explosive violence, particularly in Gaza, Ukraine and Lebanon. The international community cannot ignore the scale of harm caused.”

The true number of people affected by bombings and explosions is likely to be far higher, as AOAV bases its figures on English-language accounts of incidents.

For instance, where AOAV was only able to verify 14,435 people killed by explosions in Gaza, local health authorities put the number at 23,600.

A report last week in medical journal The Lancet estimated that casualties in Gaza in 2024 could be as much as 40 percent higher than those reported by the enclave’s authorities. 


After economic meltdown and war with Israel, Lebanon’s new prime minister vows to rebuild

After economic meltdown and war with Israel, Lebanon’s new prime minister vows to rebuild
Updated 22 min 38 sec ago
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After economic meltdown and war with Israel, Lebanon’s new prime minister vows to rebuild

After economic meltdown and war with Israel, Lebanon’s new prime minister vows to rebuild
  • After the meeting, Salam said he will not marginalize any side in Lebanon, an apparent reference to the Hezbollah militant group
  • He said that he will work on spreading the state’s authority on all parts of the country

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s prime minister-designate vowed Tuesday to work on building a modern state in the crisis-hit country, saying his priorities will be to rebuild the destruction caused by a yearlong war with Israel and work on pulling the small nation out of its historic economic meltdown.
Nawaf Salam spoke after meeting with Lebanon’s new President Joseph Aoun, who himself took office last week. With the nomination of Salam and confirmation of Aoun, Lebanon, which has been run by a caretaker administration, now has a new government in waiting for the first time in two years.
After the meeting, Salam said he will not marginalize any side in Lebanon, an apparent reference to the Hezbollah militant group, which in past years opposed his appointment as prime minister and this year indicated its preference for another candidate.
Hezbollah has been weakened by its 14-month war with Israel, which ended in late November when a US-brokered 60-day ceasefire went into effect. The war left 4,000 people dead and more than 16,000 wounded and caused destruction totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
Salam, who is currently the head of the International Court of Justice, said that he will work on spreading the state’s authority on all parts of the country. On Monday he won the support of a majority of legislators, after which Aoun formally asked him to form a new government.
Over the past years, Hezbollah and its allies have blocked Salam from becoming prime minister, casting him as a US-backed candidate.
“The time has come to say, enough. Now is the time to start a new chapter,” Salam said adding that people in Lebanon have suffered badly because of “the latest brutal Israeli aggression on Lebanon and because of the worst economic crisis and financial policies that made the Lebanese poor.”
Decades of corruption and political paralysis have left Lebanon’s banks barely functional, while electricity services are almost entirely in the hands of private diesel-run generator owners and fuel suppliers. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic further battered the economy, and the Beirut port explosion, one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever recorded, badly damaged several neighborhoods in the heart of the capital.
Salam vowed to fully implement the UN Security Council resolution related to the Israel-Hezbollah war which states that Israel should withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah should not have an armed presence close to the border with Israel.
The premier added that he will work on spreading state authority on all parts of Lebanon through “its forces.”
Salam said he will work on putting a program to build a modern economy that would help the country of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, out of its economic crisis that exploded into protests in October 2019.
Since the economic crisis began, successive governments have done little to implement reforms demanded by the international community that would lead to the release of billions of dollars of investments and loans by foreign donors.
“Both my hands are extended to all of you so that we all move forward in the mission of salvation, reforms and reconstruction,” Salam said.
Neither Salam nor Aoun, an army commander who was elected president last week, is considered part of the political class the ruled the country after the end of the 1975-90 civil war.


Sudan rescuers say more than 120 killed by shelling around capital

Sudan rescuers say more than 120 killed by shelling around capital
Updated 14 January 2025
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Sudan rescuers say more than 120 killed by shelling around capital

Sudan rescuers say more than 120 killed by shelling around capital
  • Fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has escalated in recent weeks after more than 20 months of war in Sudan

Port Sudan: Sudanese volunteer rescuers said shelling of an area of Omdurman, the capital Khartoum’s twin city just across the Nile River, killed more than 120 people.
The “random shelling” on Monday in western Omdurman resulted in the deaths of 120 civilians, said the Ombada Emergency Response Room, part of a network of volunteer rescuers across the war-torn country.
The network described the toll as preliminary and did not specify who was behind the attack.
The rescuers said medical supplies were in critically short supply as health workers struggled to treat “a large number of wounded people suffering from varying degrees of injuries.”
Fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has escalated in recent weeks after more than 20 months of war in Sudan.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war which has left the country on the brink of famine, according to aid agencies.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of targeting civilians, including health workers, and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Most of Omdurman is under army control while the RSF holds the capital and part of the greater Khartoum area.
Residents on both sides of the Nile have reported shelling across the river, with bombs and shrapnel regularly striking homes and civilians.