The thousands upon thousands of Syrians rejoicing the fall of President Bashar al-Assad have plenty to be happy about.
But many among them are celebrating the release of long-lost family members, friends and loved ones who were cast into Syria’s prisons where the Assad regime meted out a truly heinous brand of torture, torment and mistreatment.
The infamous Sednaya Prison near Damascus, nicknamed the ‘Human Slaughterhouse’, is the epicentre of this systematic terror where huge numbers of detainees were subjected to all manner of inhumane treatments and executed.
Dark footage and images published this week showed how horrified rescuers pulled out dozens upon dozens of body bags containing rotting corpses from the depths of the facility.
But there are dozens more facilities across the nation where victims of the Assad regime were left to suffer and die.
Now, as survivors of these hellhole jails emerge to reunite with their families and give chilling testimonies about life behind bars, those deemed responsible for orchestrating the horrors may soon face their comeuppance.
The leader of Syria’s rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that played a leading role in the lightning offensive that ousted Assad has vowed to hunt down officials, security forces and army officers who ‘tortured’ the Syrian people.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has vowed to rebuild Syria and HTS has spent years trying to soften its image to reassure foreign nations and minority groups.
But he openly declared he would hold accountable those found to have been involved in ‘war crimes’ against Syrians.
‘We will release a list that includes the names of the most senior officials involved in the torturing of the Syrian people,’ Golani said in a statement.
‘Rewards will be offered to those who will provide information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes.’
A view of dead bodies, who were tortured to death, at Al-Mujtahid Hospital as teams carry out investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Syria on December 10, 2024
A view of dead bodies, who were tortured to death, at Al-Mujtahid Hospital as teams carry out investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Syria on December 10, 2024
Abu Mohammed al-Golani speaks at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024
The Assad regime’s detention centres in Syria represented one of the most depraved systems of institutionalised torture in modern history.
The prison system under Assad was not merely punitive; it was a calculated mechanism to crush dissent and terrorise populations.
No one was safe from Assad’s maniacal security forces.
Rebel fighters were cast into jails along with intellectuals, activists and regular civilians – all were subjected to heinous treatment, in many cases for several decades.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights claims that since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, over 157,000 people remain under arrest or have been forcibly disappeared – including 5,274 children and 10,221 women.
More than 15,000 are said to have died under torture in that time.
The network also documented 72 different methods of regime torture that included electrocuting genitals or hanging weights from them; burning with oil, metal rods, gunpowder or flammable pesticides; crushing heads between a wall and the prison cell’s door, and inserting needles or metal pins into bodies.
Torture was not simply a byproduct or consequence of the Syrian civil war – it was a deliberate strategy designed to dismantle opposition and ensure compliance through fear.
A view of dead bodies, who were tortured to death, at Harasta Military Hospital as teams carry out an investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison
People are seen at the Sednaya Military Prison after armed groups, opposing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime take control in Damascus
An aerial view of the Sednaya Military Prison after armed groups, opposing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime take control in Damascus
For most detainees, the horror began immediately upon arrest, often with savage beatings en-route to detention facilities.
Prisoners endured brutal ‘welcome parties,’ where they were thrashed with hoses, silicone bars, and wooden sticks.
Survivors have described being suspended by their wrists for hours, enduring electric shocks, and being burned with cigarettes, in horrific accounts given to the New York Times and Amnesty International.
Once trapped behind bars, prisoners quickly became acquainted with all manner of novel torture methods – some so notorious they had been given dark monikers.
One such grotesque device nicknamed the ‘flying carpet’ saw prisoners shackled to a board strapped onto a flexible board split in half by chain metal hinges.
Guards would then lift the bottom half of the board and fold the prisoner’s legs back toward them, slowly and excruciatingly crushing them into horrific positions.
Another such torture tactic was called the ‘dulab’, in which victims’ bodies were contorted into a rubber tyre, their heads pressed into their knees, before being rolled around and beaten mercilessly.
Clothes and other discarded items in a secret compartment at Sednaya Prison
Teams continue to investigate allegations of a secret compartment in Sednaya Military Prison
Many guards are said to have delighted in meting out such cruelty.
Inmates often had to stage macabre and degrading performances, forced to mimic animals – dogs, donkeys, and cats – with beatings for any misstep.
One prison officer at Mezze air base in Damascus, who reportedly referred to himself as ‘Hitler’, was particularly fond of such performances.
First, he would hang naked inmates from a fence and spray them with water in freezing temperatures.
Once the shivering wretches were cut down, Hitler would force them to perform bizarre roles – inmates had to act as furniture for officers to trample, lean or sit on, and were beaten for failing to convincingly perform animal roles.
These acts of torture were often carried out as entertainment during officers’ dinners.
Beyond these depraved torture methods, rape and sexual assault were systematically deployed as tools of humiliation and control.
Women were routinely raped by high-ranking officers, sometimes while their screams echoed through hallways, instilling fear in other prisoners.
Men and boys were not spared, enduring sexual violence and brutal body cavity searches.
Guards would often force inmates to rape one another or face summary executions.
This ‘iron press’ is believed to have been used to crush, torture and execute prisoners
Members of the Syrian civil defence group, known as the White Helmets, search for prisoners at Sednaya prison
Nooses were found after rebel fighters liberated the Sednaya Military Prison near Damascus
Psychological warfare also included forcing detainees to listen to others being tortured or dying.
One survivor recalled a fellow inmate being doused in fuel and set alight, taking three agonising weeks to die.
Solitary confinement, overcrowding, and deprivation amplified the horrors. In cells barely three metres square, over 50 people were crammed together, unable to stand or lie down properly.
Prisoners often slept in shifts and endured starvation diets of rotting food. Many succumbed to untreated wounds, infections, or despair, their deaths marked as ‘cardiac arrest’ in falsified records.
Meanwhile, in the regime’s military ‘hospitals’, medical staff acted as executioners.
Detainees were denied basic care and died of conditions as minor as tooth infections that had been left to fester unchecked. Others faced brutal ‘medical interventions’.
One inmate at Military Hospital 601 near Damascus told the New York Times how some detainees requesting painkillers in the face of savage surgeries were simply beaten into unconsciousness.
One man at Hospital 601 who worked as a guard and a nurse called himself the ‘Angel of Death’ and was renowned for beating patients to death with a metal-tipped baton.
Corpses were piled in hallways or disposed of in mass graves, their deaths sanitised by bureaucratic euphemisms and falsified records.
Empty cells at Sednaya Military Prison in Damascus on Monday. The jail is synonymous with the worst atrocities of Assad’s rule
A hatch of an empty cell at Sednaya prison. New footage from inside one of Assad’s jails shows a body-press, medieval in its barbarity
People standing on the roof of Sednaya Prison where between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed between September 2011 and December 2015
With the mood in Damascus still celebratory, Assad’s prime minister Mohammed Jalali agreed to hand power to the HTS rebel-led Salvation Government.
The civilian governmental wing of HTS ruled over the Idlib province in northwest Syria prior to the lightning offensive that dismantled the Assad regime.
HTS leader Golani yesterday met with Jalali and Syrian Vice President Faisal Mekdad to discuss the transitional government, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
Jalali said the handover could take days to carry out, but the transitional authority will be led by HTS’ Mohamed al-Bashir, the head of the Salvation Government.
The steamroller advance of the militia alliance headed by HTS, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, was a generational turning point for the Middle East.
The civil war that began in 2011 killed hundreds of thousands, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble, countryside depopulated and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
But the rebel alliance has not communicated plans for Syria’s future, and there is no template for such a transition in the fractious region.
