Syria’s ‘slaughterhouse’ Sednaya prison: families’ desperate search for the missing

This week, Syrians across the country celebrated, but many were also desperately searching for loved ones who disappeared under Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive rule.

Large crowds gathered at the infamous Sednaya prison, a symbol of arbitrary arrests, torture, and killings. Under the scorching sun, people flooded toward the facility north of Damascus. Traffic backed up for miles, forcing some to abandon their cars and walk the final stretch uphill, past barbed wire and watchtowers.

While Assad’s lavish palaces revealed his family’s extravagant lifestyle, his prisons laid bare the horrific suffering Syrians have endured for the past five decades, CNN reported.

The Assad regime’s detention facilities have long been places of terror, where opponents vanished without a trace as far back as the 1970s. One of the most notorious was Saydnaya, nicknamed “the slaughterhouse.” Amnesty International reports that between 2011 and 2015, as many as 13,000 people were executed there by hanging.

Syrians celebrating in Latakia were filmed riding around on a toppled statue of former president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, as it was dragged through the streets. pic.twitter.com/C6hsxXndaI

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— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 8, 2024

Families push their way into prison

Rebel fighters overthrew Assad on Sunday, forcing him to flee to Russia. Soon after, images began circulating of prisoners being freed from Saydnaya prison. This sparked a wave of Syrians turning to social media, desperately searching for information about their missing loved ones.

When CNN arrived at the scene on Monday, a massive crowd gathered inside and outside the prison. Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” filled the air, accompanied by bursts of celebratory gunfire.

According to The Guardian, fighters fired shots into the air, trying to hold back the crowd from entering the prison, but people pushed forward, refusing to be stopped.

🔴 Sednaya Prison: A symbol of torture and inhumanity under Syria's brutal Assad regime

As Syria's 61-year Baath regime collapses, families wait in anguish around the infamous Sednaya Prison, clinging to hope for news of their missing loved ones pic.twitter.com/NtXwhhStkn

— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) December 9, 2024

Inside, desperate families and friends wandered through the maze-like prison. They moved from one cell to another, frantically searching for any sign of their loved ones. Their goal was to find the hidden underground section, known as the “red wing”, fearing that prisoners trapped there might be starving or suffocating due to a lack of air.

“There are three in my family missing. They told us that there are four levels underground in Sednaya and that people are choking inside. We don’t know where it is,” said Ahmad al-Shnein as he searched the prison corridor. The ones that emerged from here looked like skeletons. So imagine how those underground will look,” Shnein said.

Videos showed fighters freeing female prisoners on Sunday, who needed to be encouraged to leave, unable to believe they were truly getting out.

Cells to narrow to lie down in Sednaya

No more than a few meters across, the narrow cells had been stuffed with more than a dozen people at a time, leaving no space to lie down, according to rights groups. The screams of prisoners being tortured could be heard echoing down the hallways.

According to Amnesty International, up to 20 000 prisoners were held at Sednaya, most of them imprisoned after secret sham trials that lasted no more than a few minutes. Survivors of the prison recounted brutal daily beatings and torture by prison guards that included rape, electric shocks and more. Many were tortured to death.

Survivors of Sednaya said guards enforced a rule of absolute silence within the prison. If the detainees could not speak, they could at least write. Cell walls were covered in scrawled, handwritten messages. “Tab, khadni” (Enough already, just take me), one message read.

How many prisons were there in Syria?

According to a United Nations report, there are more than 100 detention facilities and an unknown number of secret facilities.

Two of the most notorious prisons were Tadmor, in the desert of the ancient city of Palmyra, and Sednaya.

There are countless people still trapped in underground dungeons, according to relief groups.

Authorities have called on former soldiers and prison guards to provide opposition forces with the passwords to unlock underground electronic doors. They claimed that thousands of detainees were still trapped in these dungeons, according to CCTV images, Al Jazeera reported.

It’s unclear who exactly is still behind bars. Yet rebels have so far released thousands of women, as well as elderly and middle-aged men. Some of these people spent the majority of their lives in prison.
Rebels also discovered small children in the regime’s custody.

How were people tortured?

The Syrian regime used several techniques to punish real and perceived opponents. They would whip detainees, deprive them of sleep and electrocute them.

Women and men were routinely stripped naked, blindfolded and even raped.

On top of that, three particular torture methods became notorious in Syria for literally snapping a detainee’s back.

The first, known as the “German chair,” involved prison guards sitting detainees on a chair and bending them backwards until their spines snapped.

A second was called the “flying carpet,” whereby victims were placed on a foldable wooden board.

Guards would then elevate the two sides of the board, bringing the victim’s knees and chest together until the position caused immense back pain.

Finally, prison guards often tied detainees to a ladder and then would push the ladder over and watch the victim fall on their back.

Why did the regime arrest and torture so many Syrians?

To terrorise and scare them into submission.

Before the 2011 Syrian uprising, people in the country used to say, “The walls have ears”. It referred to the regime’s sprawling intelligence surveillance system and network of spies, the dreaded Mukhabarat.

Anyone who made a critical comment about the regime risked disappearing into one of its dungeons.

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