Sednaya Prison

Sednaya Prison (Arabic: سجن صيدنايا, romanized: Sijn Ṣaydnāyā), nicknamed the "Human Slaughterhouse" (المسلخ البشري), was a military prison and death camp north of Damascus, Syria, operated by Ba'athist Syria. The prison was used to hold thousands of prisoners, both civilian detainees and anti-government rebels as well as political prisoners. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees were killed by the Assad regime in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Sednaya between September 2011 and December 2015."

Sednaya Prison

Satellite view
Location	Saidnaya, Rif Dimashq Governorate, Syria
Coordinates	33°39′54″N 36°19′43″E
Status	Defunct
Opened	1986 (construction began in 1981)
Closed	8 December 2024

Human rights organizations identified over 27 prisons and detention centers run by Assad's government around the country where detainees were routinely tortured and killed. A Syrian defector, known by the pseudonym Caesar, smuggled out thousands of photographs from these prisons, showing the bodies of those who had been tortured and killed. Caesar had taken the photographs himself.

A former inmate of the prison who was detained for participating in a peaceful non-violent protest told Amnesty International that at Sednaya prisoners were forced to choose between dying themselves or killing one of their own relatives or friends. The former inmate also stated that in the first prison he was at, prisoners were also forced into cannibalism, but that prison was "heaven" compared to Sednaya Prison. According to the inmate, the other prison (Branch 215) was "to interrogate" (including through torture), but when that was done, you were moved to Sednaya "to die".

A wide variety of inhumane torture practices were carried out in the prison, ranging from perpetual beatings, sexual assaults, decapitations, rapes, burnings, and the use of hinged boards known as "flying carpets". In 2017, the US State Department alleged that a crematorium had been built at the prison to dispose of the bodies of the executed.

On 8 December 2024 the prison was taken over by rebel forces as they advanced into Damascus. The prison administration agreed to surrender the prison to rebel forces, in exchange for their safe withdrawal. Following the takeover, the remaining inmates in the "white" part of Sednaya prison were released from the facilities; rebel forces took several more days to break into and free inmates from the deeper "red" part of the prison.

Sednaya was considered the most notorious of the Assad regime's network of prisons and a symbol for the regime's repressiveness due to the torture, sexual assault, and mass executions. After its capture in 2024, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham published a list of escaped prison staff, who are now among the most wanted fugitives in Syria after members of the Assad family.

Background

The Sednaya Prison is located 30 kilometers (19 mi) north of the Syrian capital, Damascus, in Rif Dimashq. The prison consists of two buildings with a total of 10,000–20,000 detainees and is under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Defense while operated by the Syrian Military Police. The prison complex was divided into a "white" section above ground and a "red" section that extended three levels underground. The underground section was less accessible and housed many of the most severely abused prisoners.

Salt rooms

There were at least two so-called "salt rooms" at Sednaya, with the first opening as early as 2013. One, located on the first floor of the "Red Building", was a rectangular room 6 by 8 metres (20 by 26 feet). Another, was 4 by 5 metres (13 by 16.5 feet) with no toilet. The rooms had a layer of salt usually for de-icing roads and were used as mortuaries to preserve dead bodies in the absence of refrigerated morgues. When a detainee at Sednaya died, their body would be left inside a cell with other inmates for two to five days before being taken to the salt room. The rock salt used at Sednaya came from Sabkhat al-Jabbul in Aleppo Governorate.

Alleged crematorium

On 15 May 2017, the United States Department of State accused the Syrian government of operating a crematorium at the prison to dispose of bodies and destroy evidence of war crimes. This assessment was based on declassified satellite photographs. The photographs, taken over several years starting in 2013, showed building modifications that the State Department interpreted as consistent with a crematorium, though they could not definitively prove its existence. More than six Syrians told the New York Times they either witnessed bodies being burned or detected suspicious odors.

However, Amnesty International, which had extensively interviewed former guards and inmates, noted that none had mentioned a crematorium. According to escapees, bodies were typically buried outside the compound. The New York Times reported that Syrian opposition sources and former detainees had alleged the existence of crematoria at other Syrian government detention facilities, including the Mezzeh Air Base, and documented previous instances of government forces burning bodies.

History

Establishment (1978–1987)

Efforts to establish Sednaya Prison began in 1978, when the Syrian government confiscated land from local landowners, assigning it to the Ministry of Defense to construct a prison. Construction began in 1981 and finished in 1986, with the first detainees arriving in 1987.

Early operations and 2008 massacre

According to the Syrian Human Rights Committee, the military police changed all the locks of the prison cells on the night of 4 July 2008. On the day, after a search operation was launched through all the prisons quarters in which the security guards trampled on copies of the Quran. The act triggered fury among Muslim detainees who rushed to collect the Quran copies. The guards opened fire and killed nine of the prisoners. Of the nine killed prisoners, they were able to identify eight: Zakaria Affash, Mohammed Mahareesh, Abdulbaqi Khattab, Ahmed Shalaq, Khalid Bilal, Mo’aid Al-Ali, Mohannad Al-Omar, and Khader Alloush. Clashes have been reported after this incident, where the total number of victims reached 25 detainees. However, the committee could not ascertain their identities.

Human Rights Watch, through their regional Director Sarah Leah Whitson, called on President Bashar al-Assad to immediately order an independent investigation into the police's use of lethal force at Sednaya prison. SANA, the Syrian official news agency, issued a short press release on 6 July, stating that "a number of prisoners…incited chaos and breached public order in the prison and attacked other fellow prisoners…during an inspection by the prison administration." The agency reported that the situation required "the intervention of the unit of guards to bring order to the prison." Ammar al-Qurabi, the director of the National Organization for Human Rights, commented on SANA's release by asking to form a committee of activists which can visit the detainees and ascertain their conditions, and he confirmed that the number of prisoners in Sednaya was between 1,500 and 2,000. 200 of them had Islamic backgrounds, and most of them participated in the Iraq war. Al-Qurabi called to investigating the massacre's perpetrators and announcing the investigation's result. Also, he asked for enhancing the living conditions and the medical care of the detainees.

Syrian civil war period (2011–2024)

After months of anti-government protests in 2011, many prisoners, including secular and Islamist detainees, were released in several amnesties. Zahran Alloush, Abu Shadi Aboud (brother of Hassan Aboud) and Ahmed Abu Issa were some of the more prominent prisoners released from the prison. After their release, many took up arms against the government and became leaders of Islamist rebel groups including Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar ash-Sham and Suqour al-Sham Brigade in the Syrian civil war.

Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP)

In 2020, the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) was established to support detainees in the prison and their relatives.

Fall of the regime and closure (2024)

On 8 December 2024, during the fall of the Assad regime, the prison was captured by rebels, who immediately began releasing political prisoners. Many of the detainees were overjoyed while others were confused. Videos and images appeared on social media showing security cameras of imprisoned people, including families and children.

Rebels entered the women's section of the prison, where some had been imprisoned alongside their children, and began to free them. The rebels identified themselves, informed the prisoners that Bashar al-Assad had fallen, and urged the prisoners to "go wherever they wanted". The initial reaction was disbelief and confusion amongst the inmates. Some prisoners who had been detained for decades did not know that Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez had died 24 years prior and believed he was still in power, mistaking rebel troops for invading Ba'athist Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein coming to liberate them.

During the takeover, rebels discovered underground cells beneath the main prison building where dozens of men were confined in darkness. Prisoners trapped in tunnels under the building called for help, prompting rebels to attempt breaking through concrete barriers to reach them as power outages disabled ventilation systems. The cells contained plastic bottles used for urine storage and water-soaked blankets. Rebels uncovered an iron press they alleged was used to compress remains of executed prisoners. Many released prisoners, having forgotten their own names due to severe trauma, were brought to a nearby mosque for identification. Witnesses reported helicopters landing at the prison on 7 December before rebel forces arrived, apparently evacuating guards and select high-value prisoners.

Search efforts led by the White Helmets concluded on 9 December, determining that no hidden or sealed areas that could contain detainees were left.

According to Fadel Abdul Ghany, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, approximately 2,000 prisoners emerged from Sednaya when it was liberated, though questions remained about the fate of thousands more who were believed to have been held there. Videos obtained by The New York Times showed numbered cells that had held dozens of prisoners each, littered with debris, clothing and belongings. While some groups reported higher numbers of releases, the Association of Detainees & the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) stated it had documentation showing about 4,300 detainees as of 28 October 2024, with approximately that number having been freed."

Human rights abuses

Systematic abuse and torture

Before being transferred to Sednaya, detainees typically spent months or years in other detention facilities. Sednaya often served as the final destination for prisoners after extended periods in other detention facilities. This practice became systematic after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. The transfer process has drawn international criticism, particularly from Amnesty International, for its use of secret military courts and unfair trials. Prisoners interviewed by Amnesty described these trials as shams that lasted only one to three minutes. Some detainees were falsely told they would be transferred to civilian prisons, when they were instead marked for execution. Other detainees were denied any form of trial.

Sednaya was considered the most notorious of the Assad regime's network of prisons and a symbol for the regime's repressiveness due to the torture, sexual assault, and mass executions. In 2012, Human Rights Watch documented 27 of these detention centers across Syria, many in Damascus. The scale of abuse and death at these facilities was revealed by Caesar, a forensic photographer for the Military Police. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), more than 136,614 people, including 3,698 children and 8,504 women, were detained in Syrian prisons during the Syrian civil war between March 2011 and December 2024.

According to a 2017 Amnesty International report, as many as 13,000 people were hanged in 5 years at Sednaya. According to the report, based on interviews with former inmates, judges, and guards, groups of up to 50 people were removed from their cells for arbitrary trials, beaten, and hanged. Most of the victims were civilians believed to be opposed to the government of Bashar al-Assad.

New inmates were subjected to what was known as the "welcome party," during which they were systematically beaten. One former detainee, Salam, a lawyer from Aleppo, described the process: "The soldiers will practice their 'hospitality' with each new group of detainees during the 'welcome party'… You are thrown to the ground and they use different instruments for the beatings: electric cables with exposed copper wire ends – they have little hooks so they take a part of your skin – normal electric cables, plastic water pipes of different sizes and metal bars. Also, they have created what they call the 'tank belt', which is made out of tyre that has been cut into strips... They make a very specific sound; it sounds like a small explosion. I was blindfolded the whole time, but I would try to see somehow. All you see is blood: your own blood, the blood of others. After one hit, you lose your sense of what is happening. You're in shock. But then the pain comes."

The detainees were also deprived of food and water, and had been raped and forced to rape each other. One of the testifications states: "They beat me until I was lying on the ground and then they kicked me with their military boots, in the places where I have had my hip operations, until I passed out. When I woke up, I was back in the solitary cell – they had dragged me back there from that room – but my trousers had been opened and moved down a bit, my abaya [full-length robe] was open and my undershirt was moved up. Everything was hurting, so I couldn't tell if I had been raped. It was overwhelming pain everywhere." When they did get food, it was often mixed with blood. Amnesty International has managed to confirm the names of 375 individuals executed in Sednaya prison, and while the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, suggests that tens of thousands of detainees have died in Sednaya and other government-run detention centers since 2011 as a result of the extermination policies, Amnesty International itself calculates the number of deaths to between 5,000 and 13,000.

There have repeatedly been reports on inhumane conditions for detainees in Sednaya (as well as other Syrian prisons), ranging from torture and malnutrition to spontaneous executions without fair trials.

"Seventy-five per cent of people who go into Sednaya do not come out alive. It is a field court, where most 'judges' are from the secret police."

— A Syrian lawyer working with prisoners in Hama

Documentation and Investigation

Sednaya had come into the public eye when the 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar report was unveiled. It was authored by the legal team consisting of The Right Honourable Sir Desmond De Silva QC, the former Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the former lead prosecutor of ex-President Slobodan Milošević of Yugoslavia, before the International Criminal Tribune for the former Yugoslavia, and Professor David M. Crane, the first Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, with the help of a forensic team. The legal and forensic teams came to the conclusion that the photos Caesar took were credible, and that they clearly showed "signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing." While most of the 55,000 photos encompassing around 11,000 victims from the report are from other detention facilities in Damascus, some of them are also from the Sednaya prison. Prisoners were also often transferred between different facilities: some detainees were transferred to Sednaya from the Mezze Air Force Branch, while others were taken from Sednaya to Tishreen. In early 2017 the Sednaya Military Prison again came into the public eye when an Amnesty International report was released on 7 February. The report, the result of the research conducted by Amnesty International which took place between December 2015 and December 2016, raises a plethora of accusations against the Syrian government. It alleges that the government has at its highest instances, authorized the killings of thousands of people in the Sednaya prison since 2011. After interviewing 84 people, out of which 31 were former detainees, Amnesty International concluded that the government implemented systematic torture in Sednaya.

Another former detainee is Samer al-Ahmed who, on a regular basis, was forced to squeeze his head through the small hatch near the bottom of his cell door. It was then straightened out by the prison guards when they, with all their weight, jumped on his head. This required that al-Ahmed's head was pressed against the edge of the hatch. The guards would continue the torture until blood started flowing across the floor.

Torture methods in Sednaya varied. One common interrogation technique called shabeh was described by one of the witnesses: "They had me stand on the barrel, and they tied the rope around my wrists. Then they took away the barrel. There was nothing below my feet. They were dangling in the air. They brought three sticks… [They were] hitting me everywhere… After they were done beating me with the wooden sticks, they took the cigarettes. They were putting them out all over my body. It felt like a knife excavating my body, cutting me apart." Other methods of torture consisted of leaving people in stress positions while beating them or torturing them with electricity.

Describing the nature of the ongoing torture in the prison, the Amnesty Report states:

"In Sednaya, torture is not used to force a detainee to “confess”, as it is in branches of the security forces, but instead as a method of punishment and degradation. The most common form of torture used at Sednaya is regular and brutal beatings. Detainees told Amnesty International that the beatings they endured were sometimes so severe that they caused life-long damage and disability or death... Former detainees told Amnesty International that they were also subjected to sexual violence at Sednaya, including rape. According to former detainee “Hassan”: “They were making people take their clothes off, and touch each other in sensitive places, and rape each other too. I went through this only one time, but I heard about it happening so much.”

The Syrian Justice Ministry denied the report issued by Amnesty International, describing it as "devoid of truth" and considering it to be a part of a smear campaign targeted against Syrian government. The Syrian Justice Ministry holds a view that motivation for the allegations to smear the Syrian government's international reputation come from recent "military victories against terrorist groups".

Individual cases

The Syrian Mus’ab al-Hariri belonged to the banned organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, and lived in exile in Saudi Arabia until his return to Syria in 2002 with his mother. She worried that their return would cause problems for her son because of his political stance but the Syrian Embassy in Saudi Arabia had assured her that this would not happen. However, shortly after al-Hariri's return, he was sentenced by the Syrian Security forces on 24 July 2002. At the time of arrest, he was only 14 years old. Even though the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention announced al-Hariri's detention as arbitrary, the authorities took no step to amend his situation. The UN Working Group based its announcement on their assessment that he did not receive a fair trial. Four main issues that were raised were his young age when arrested, that he had been held in isolation for more than two years, reportedly tortured and that he was sentenced by the SSSC (Supreme State Security Court) in June 2005 to six years in prison despite no substantial evidence. All the SSSC knew was that al-Hariri belonged to the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

The Syrian Human Rights Committee reported in 2004 about people being arrested the same year because of political reasons. To offer the suspected individuals human rights defenders and lawyers was not self-evident and as in the case of Mus’ab al-Hariri, hundreds of prisoners remained in long detention without trial or following sentences enforced after unfair trials. It was also reported that no respect was given to the poor health condition of prisoners and that these were still held in rigorous conditions.

Omar al-Shogre, a Syrian teenager has testified that he had gone through 11 Syrian prisons during his several years of imprisonment. Sednaya was the final one. He had described the events in Sednaya as beginning with a "welcome party" during which new inmates were beaten with "metal parts from a tank". In Shogre's case, one officer beat ten newly arrived inmates. He states that "for 15 days [he] couldn't open [his] eyes or get up". After a month in Sednaya, Shogre was taken to a trial under the accusations for terrorism. The trial, he says, lasted for 5 seconds. He contracted tuberculosis there and witnessed what he thinks is an occurrence of "organ harvesting".

Testimonies

These testimonies are collected from three different sources. Two documentaries and a series of articles: "The Black Box: The Death in Sednaya" by Al Jazeera, "The Road to Sednaya: We have Changed", Omar Abdullah by Orient News, and "Sednaya Death speaks", Zaman Alwasl newspaper. According to many detainees, in 2005 Ali Kher Bek became the director of the prison and he was very strict and harsh with detainees. He worsened their life conditions by halting visits and cutting electricity in the prison for a long period of time.

Diab Serriya, a former detainee, had been accused of forming a youth opposition group. He was arrested in 2006 and released in 2011 after a general amnesty. “We had the feeling that the prisoners would rebel in any moment because the living situation was unbearable. Diab said that on 26 March 2008, a fight broke out between a prisoner and a security guard, which led to Ali Kher Bek's rage. On the next day he walked with other security forces through the prison shouting at the prisoners and insulting them. He visited all the dungeons of the prison. The security forces dragged prisoners in charge of all the prison's wards and punished them. Some detainees kept shouting “Allahu Akbar” and banging on the metal doors. A rebellion broke out and the prison went out of control.

Serriya told Zaman Alwasel newspaper that security forces used tear gas and fired in the air to intimidate prisoners, most of which ran to the roof and started to burn blankets, plastic bags and wooden pieces to send a message that the prison was in chaos and urgent help was needed. When the security forces could not regain control over the prison, the government launched negotiations with the prisoners, through which it agreed on providing fair trials for detainees, allowing family visits again, enhancing the living conditions, increasing the daily break time, improving the quality of beverage and drinks, providing a proper medical care, in addition to immediate change for the unfair treatment of the prisoners. This incident was known as “the first rebellion”, and lasted for one day.

After this incident, the prison went into loose policy. The internal doors were left open all the time, prisoners started to defy the security forces, and lenient treatment was obvious. The effect of “the first rebellion” lasted until 5 July 2008 when the director launched an offensive to discipline the prisoners. Many fights broke between the prisoners and the military police until prisoners overpowered them. In addition to exerting control over the whole prison, and retaining more than 1245 out of 1500 from military police. From the outer fence of the prison, security forces opened fire and killed the first group, which attempted to flee the prison due to the unbearable situations. The group was: Wael al-Khous, Zakaria Affash, Daham Jebran, Ahmed Shalaq, Mohammed Abbas, Hassan Al-Jaberie, Mohammed Eld Al-Ahmad, Khader Alloush, Abdulbaqi Khattab, Maen Majarish and Mo’aid Al-Ali. Fearing suffocation of the tear gas and the bloody scenes inside the building, the prisoners dragged some of the hostages to the roof so they could communicate with the military forces outside and find a way out of the dilemma. However, the government forces opened fire and killed almost 30 military police hostages and some prisoners who were with them. In addition, 10 hostages were killed by the prisoners and 6 committed suicide out of fear of being killed by the prisoners.

After a long battle, military reinforcements from the capital arrived to Sednaya and laid siege around the prison. Some tried to break in but in vain. After 10 days of negotiation, the government agreed on evacuating the injured who faced torture in Tishreen hospital and six of them died under torture there. The government promised to punish the perpetrators and told the prisoners that the director of Tishreen hospital was fired. It also improved the quality of water.

Amnesty's reconstruction of Sednaya Prison

The lack of accessibility to reports from journalists and monitoring groups have made reliable information about the prison very difficult to find. The only available sources on the incidents inside the Sednaya prison derive from the memories of former detainees. In April 2016, Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture traveled to Turkey to meet five Sednaya survivors. The researchers used architectural and acoustic modeling to reconstruct the prison and the survivors’ experiences at detention. As there are no images of the prison and because the prisoners were held in darkness under strictly enforced silence, researchers had to depend entirely on their memories and acute experience of sound, footsteps, door opening and locking and water dripping in the pipes among other things. The fact that prisoners rarely saw daylight, they were, consequently, forced to develop an acute relation to sound. Having to cover their eyes with their hands whenever a guard entered the room made them become attuned to the smallest sounds. In a video interview, a former Sednaya detainee says "You try to build an image based on the sounds you hear. You know the person by the sound of his footsteps. You can tell the food times by the sound of the bowl. If you hear screaming, you know newcomers have arrived. When there is no screaming, we know they are accustomed to Sednaya." Sound became the instrument by which inmates navigated and measured their environment. Therefore, sound also became one of the essential tools with which the prison could be digitally reconstructed. The sound artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan used a technique of “echo profiling” which made it possible for him to decide the size of cells, stairwells, and corridors. He played different sound reflections and asked former inmates to match these tones of different decibel levels to the levels of specific incidents inside the prison.

Based on these testimonies and with the help of an architect working with 3D modeling software, Amnesty and Forensic Architecture have constructed a model on the entire prison. As they remembered, the witnesses added objects like torture tools, blankets, furniture, and areas where they recalled them being used. In Sednaya, the architecture of the prison emerges not only as a location of torture but itself as an instrument in its perpetration. Forensic Architecture's project on Sednaya is part of a larger campaign run by Amnesty International. The project aims to pressure the Syrian government to allow independent monitors into the detention centres. Amnesty urged countries to admit independent monitors to investigate conditions in Syria's torture prisons.

The 2017 Amnesty Report concludes:

"Sednaya Military Prison is a human slaughterhouse. The bodies of Sednaya’s victims are taken away by the truckload. Many are hanged, secretly, in the middle of the night. Others die as a result of torture, and many are killed slowly through the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care. It is inconceivable that this is not authorized by the highest levels of the Syrian political leadership."

Notable inmates

• Zahran Alloush, former leader of Jaysh al-Islam
• Hassan Aboud, former leader of Ahrar ash-Sham
• Abu Yahia al-Hamawi, former leader of Ahrar ash-Sham
• Abu Jaber Shaykh, senior leader of Tahrir al-Sham
• Ahmed Abu Issa, leader of Suqour al-Sham Brigade
• Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, former leader and spokesperson of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
• Ahmed Fouad Zeitouneh, 13 year old Lebanese held hostage and survived human torture
• Abu Luqman, former ISIL governor of Raqqah
• Haitham al-Maleh, human rights activist and lawyer
• Jihad Qassab, former footballer who was executed on 30 September 2016
• Hassan Soufan, former leader of Ahrar al-Sham from 2017 to 2018 and the general commander of the Syrian Liberation Front.
• Omar Alshogre, Director of Detainee Issues at the Syrian Emergency Task Force
• Mazen al-Hamada, activist from Deir ez-Zor. His body was discovered on 9 December 2024.
• Ragheed al-Tatari, former military aviator

External links

Media related to Sednaya Prison at Wikimedia Commons

• "Révélations sur le massacre de la prison de Saydnaya". Courrier international (in French). 22 September 2011. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
• "Syria: Investigate Sednaya Prison Deaths". Human Rights Watch. 21 July 2008. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
• "Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian torture prison". Amnesty International. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
• "Inside Saydnaya: Syria's Torture Prison ." Amnesty International at YouTube. 18 August 2016.