What It Was Like Inside Syria’s Most Fearsome Prison

No place in Syria was extra feared than Sednaya jail through the Assad household’s decades-long, iron-fisted rule.

Located on a barren hilltop on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, Sednaya was on the coronary heart of the Assads’ intensive system of torture prisons and arbitrary arrests used to crush all dissent.

By the tip of the practically 14-year civil warfare that culminated in December with the autumn of President Bashar al-Assad, it had turn out to be a haunting image of the dictator’s ruthlessness.

Through the years, the regime’s safety equipment swallowed up a whole lot of hundreds of activists, journalists, college students and dissidents from throughout Syria — many by no means to be heard from once more.

Most prisoners didn’t count on to make it out of Sednaya alive. They watched as males detained with them withered away or just misplaced the desire to stay. Tens of hundreds of others have been executed, in response to rights teams.

David Guttenfelder/The New York Occasions

Ehab Mouma from Damascus was imprisoned in 2018 after becoming a member of the insurgent rebellion in opposition to the Assad authorities.

David Guttenfelder/The New York Occasions

Fares al-Diq, who joined the insurgent motion, was taken at a checkpoint in central Syria in July 2019.

David Guttenfelder/The New York Occasions

Mohammad al-Abdallah from Homs, in western Syria, was arrested in March 2020, inside months of his brothers Akram and Khalid al-Abdallah.

Munzer al-Uthman from Homs was arrested in 2020 after defecting from obligatory navy service.

The New York Occasions visited Sednaya a number of occasions, together with the day after the regime fell. We interviewed 16 former prisoners and two former jail officers, and constructed a complete 3-D mannequin of the jail utilizing greater than 130 movies filmed on web site by journalists for The Occasions who surveyed the huge complicated.

We additionally spoke with prisoners’ family and a prisoner advocacy group to corroborate the main points surrounding their arrests.

Former prisoners informed The Occasions that they have been tortured, overwhelmed and disadvantaged of meals, water and medication. A few of them noticed prisoners or have been themselves overwhelmed by docs chargeable for treating them, leaving them swollen and sometimes bleeding till they died.

A number of the former prisoners’ accounts included descriptions of violence that might not be independently verified, however that have been largely in keeping with each other and with rights teams’ studies on Sednaya.

Our reporting uncovered new particulars of the systemic torture and inhumane situations the Assad authorities used to interrupt anybody who dared to talk up in opposition to it.

Sednaya was so feared that few in Syria dared to utter its title. After rebels ousted Mr. al-Assad, the jail was all of the sudden open to the general public for the primary time.

The jail complicated was constructed in 1987 and included a Y-shaped fundamental constructing, which rose 4 tales above the bottom.

Over the course of the civil warfare, greater than 30,000 prisoners died at Sednaya, many executed in mass hangings, in response to rights teams. Amnesty Worldwide described it as a “human slaughterhouse.” The true dying toll from Sednaya stays unknown.

Former prisoners who had been imprisoned previously few years informed us that each few weeks, guards rounded up dozens of prisoners to execute them.

“Daily we requested ourselves, ‘Will they execute us now?,’” stated Mr. al-Diq, the previous insurgent. “‘What is going to they do with us right this moment?’”

From Cage to Dungeon

The prisoners usually arrived on the Sednaya complicated bundled in cargo vehicles, blindfolded and with their wrists shackled, former prisoners informed us.

When the again door of the truck swung open, guards corralled them into an consumption space on the fundamental jail constructing, barking at them to maintain their heads down and beating them with batons.

Then, prisoners have been pressured to squat with their heads between their legs as guards registered their names.

The inmates have been informed to strip bare and compelled into steel cages that lined the partitions.

When peaceable protests in opposition to the regime in 2011 became a civil warfare, Mohammad al-Buraidi, 32, a musician from the southern metropolis of Daraa, was coaching on the oud — a pear-shaped string instrument.

He joined the insurgent motion to defend his hometown from authorities forces. After a crackdown on the rebels, he laid down his arms, and in 2022, complied with a authorities mandate to hitch its navy. Inside months of doing so, he was arrested and accused of constant to assist the rebels, fees he denied.

By the point Mr. al-Buraidi arrived at Sednaya, he, like most former prisoners The Occasions talked to, had already endured months of torture in filthy dungeons and detention amenities throughout the nation. Mr. al-Buraidi stated he spent a month in jail in Damascus hanging from the ceiling by his palms for a number of hours a day earlier than he was transferred to Sednaya.

The guards instructed the boys that their lives now revolved round three guidelines, in response to former prisoners. Don’t ask for meals or water. Don’t contact the cell door or ask for assist. If a cellmate dies, depart his physique there.

The prisoners got a couple of small items of bread.

Some males resorted to licking sewage water off the ground. They slept sitting up, Mr. al-Buraidi stated, so their our bodies wouldn’t be lined in feces.

Mr. al-Uthman, 30, spent eight days in an underground cell after he was arrested in 2020. It was summer time and the cell was suffocating, he stated.

“It’s so scorching and stuffy down within the underground cell that after a few days, you begin begging — not on your freedom, however to not less than be taken as much as the group cells,” he stated.

When one in every of his cellmates collapsed and misplaced consciousness, Mr. al-Uthman and the opposite inmates panicked.

A cellmate yelled out for assist. The guards yanked open the door and dragged the collapsed man into the hallway, beating him with batons and pulverizing his palms and legs.

Then they tossed him again into the cell. For days, Mr. al-Uthman tried to revive the person, accumulating his personal urine in his cupped palms to attempt to get him to drink.

The person regained consciousness however died two months later, Mr. al-Uthman stated.

The place Dying Was All the time Close to

After per week or so in underground cells, prisoners have been moved to group cells unfold throughout three wings on the highest three flooring of the constructing.

Mr. Mouma, 33, who was arrested in 2018, spent six years in Sednaya. He moved to a brand new cell each few months, he stated, as waves of cholera and tuberculosis seized the jail.

The times started round 6 a.m., when prisoners woke as much as the sound of steel clanking, as guards did their day by day rounds. Guards typically ordered the prisoners to kneel in the back of the cell, going through away from the door, in response to two former prisoners.

Then they requested if anybody had died.

“We needed to inform the officers that now we have a ‘carcass’ — not a ‘martyr’ or ‘somebody who had died,’” Mr. Mouma stated. “We couldn’t even say the phrase ‘physique,’ in any other case they might kill you.”

A health care provider accompanied the guards. Essentially the most infamous one was identified to prisoners solely as “The Butcher.” Throughout rounds, his gruff voice bellowed throughout the jail, sending chills up Mr. Mouma’s backbone.

If a prisoner requested for medical assist, the Butcher usually yanked him out of his cell and beat him unconscious, Mr. Mouma and different prisoners stated. The Butcher threatened to kill anybody who seemed him within the face.

Prisoners obtained minimal meals. A single bowl of yogurt to share amongst 20 folks. Typically a little bit of bread or some cheese. In the event that they have been fortunate, they might get a couple of eggs.

The guards typically taunted the prisoners, stepping on their meals or purposely spilling it on the prisoners’ blankets as they delivered it.

“I can’t even describe the meals they’d convey us,” Mr. Mouma stated. “Not even a canine could be keen to eat this.”

With each passing month in Sednaya, Mr. Mouma grew extra gaunt, his pores and skin pale and fragile, draped throughout protruding bones. He prayed he wouldn’t be overwhelmed. He prayed he would stay another day.

Those that managed to outlive the situations nonetheless confronted the prospect of dying by execution after being sentenced in sham trials.

Each two weeks, guards banged on the iron gates of every wing and skim out an inventory of names of these being summoned for executions, in response to eight former prisoners.

In desperation, some who heard their names ran to the toilet of their cells to cover. Others reluctantly stepped out, figuring out their destiny was sealed.

Initially of the civil warfare, prisoners have been taken from the primary constructing to a small room within the basement of one other constructing 500 toes away.

There they have been hanged within the presence of a number of folks, together with the jail director, in response to two jail officers. The jail officers spoke on the situation of anonymity for worry of retaliation.

An Unlikely Reunion

The one contact some prisoners had with the surface world got here as soon as each couple months when members of the family have been allowed to go to for a couple of minutes.

Within the visitation corridor, the prisoners and their family members have been saved a number of toes aside and separated by floor-to-ceiling bars. A hall patrolled by a guard separated the prisoners from their guests.

For some prisoners, the visits introduced a distinct sort of ache. Mr. al-Uthman — the Homs native arrested in 2020 — recalled how his cellmate’s go to along with his spouse and new child daughter for the primary time since he was arrested was an excessive amount of.

Within the weeks that got here after, his cellmate stopped consuming and ingesting. He sat within the nook of their cell, refusing to talk with anybody besides a hallucination of his spouse. Months later, he died, Mr. al-Uthman stated.

Different prisoners discovered a glimpse of hope within the visits.

Sitting within the visitation room practically two years into his incarceration, Mr. al-Abdallah, 27, heard the guards shout a reputation he acknowledged: Akram al-Abdallah, his youthful brother.

Years earlier, Mohammad and Akram had given up their desires of changing into docs to hitch the rebels of their neighborhood in Homs, the brothers stated.

Within the ready room, Mohammad seemed up and noticed Akram — gaunt, drained, a shell of the brother he knew. Mohammad may acknowledge him solely by his voice.

“It was like I had died, and all of the sudden my soul got here again to me,” Mohammad stated. Till that second, Mohammad had not realized that Akram was additionally in Sednaya.

The 2 later discovered that Khalid, their youngest brother, had additionally been held there for years, solely to die whereas incarcerated.

Round six months earlier than the regime fell, Akram ended up being transferred to the cell subsequent to Mohammad, the brothers stated. Akram had fallen sick and was weaker than ever.

Each night time, the 2 brothers would speak to one another by small openings in between their cells — the sound of their voices a uncommon consolation.

Freedom for These Nonetheless Alive

Many of the prisoners couldn’t think about ever leaving Sednaya.

Then, on Dec. 8, 2024, the unfathomable occurred.

In the midst of the night time, the prisoners all of the sudden heard a commotion and the jail employees yelling. A short while later, they might hear the whop-whop of a helicopter touchdown on the roof. Then gunshots, the rattling of iron bars and screams of “Allahu akbar,” “God is nice.”

With little entry to the surface world, most prisoners have been unaware of the rebels’ lightning advance — and confusion and terror stuffed their cells.

Mr. al-Diq, who was grabbed at a checkpoint in 2019, thought that prisoners have been rioting and flattened himself on the bottom, too terrified to maneuver.

Mr. al-Buraidi and his cellmates ran to the toilet of their cell, as males pressured open the door to their wing with the butt of a rifle. After they shot open his cell door, the boys shouted: “Go, go wherever you need in Syria,” Mr. al-Buraidi recalled. “You’re free now!”

When Mohammad and his brother Akram made it out of their cells, they embraced, Akram collapsing in Mohammad’s arms.

Mr. al-Uthman started operating down the street from the jail, satisfied for miles that his newfound freedom was a farce and that guards would seem out of nowhere to throw him again in Sednaya.

Mr. Mouma stumbled out of the jail complicated in incredulity.

“We couldn’t imagine it, and we had no concept what to do,” he stated. “It was ecstasy past description.”