Inmates at infamous Sednaya prison demand Assad face trial in Syria

It’s been a year since the fall of the regime Bashar al Assada year after the doors of this prison opened, which earned the name “human slaughterhouse” due to the brutality of the treatment of inmates. Farez spent five years of his life in this hell on earth. He was captured at a checkpoint, they searched his phone and saw photos of him working as a rescuer in the Zamalka neighborhood, where Assad’s army gassed thousands of people in 2013. They accused him of being one of those responsible for the use of chemical weapons and sentenced him to death.

“We entered 68 prisoners on the same day and 13 survived. It was a prison in which the jailers told us that everything was forbidden except to hit and kill us,” he explains from the grocery store opened a year ago, in front of the Great Mosque of Douma, the most important town in the rural belt of the capital and a major rebel stronghold during the civil war.

Farez left a few months before his release, through a process full of bribes to former soldiers, and on December 8, 2024, when the regime collapsed, the first thing he did was get on a motorcycle with his cousin and climb the mountain over which Sednaya presides to break down the gates and see his friends. “I was surprised because a lot of people had panic attacks when they saw us coming, they had no news from outside, they didn’t know what had happened and they were terrified that we were going to kill them,” he said.

Twelve months have passed since that day and what he is asking for now is justice. This week he took part in a reconnaissance tour during which he once again encountered one of the worst jailers he had. “He was one of the toughest, when it was time to leave the cell, cut our hair or wash us, he loved to hit us on the back with the club, he was a sadist.” He believes that the new authorities are doing everything they can to arrest those responsible for Sednaya who remained in Syria. But he regrets that “those who are outside will be spared, with Al Assad in the lead; “I don’t think we will see him in court in Damascus, even if that is what we all want.”

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Barely 30 kilometers separate the prison from the capital. The center was built at the time of Hafez al Assad and acquired its bad reputation after the outbreak of the “Arab Spring” protests in 2011. Assad’s forces made it a place to lock up political prisoners, some for their revolutionary activities and the vast majority simply because they lived in areas of rebellion against the regime, as was the case with Farez. A collective punishment. Passing a checkpoint for residents of these areas was a lottery since, according to the officers on duty, they could end up in Sednaya and disappear forever.

Tens of thousands of people were tortured and killed during the 13-year civil war. The prison had about 1,500 inmates in 2007, but its population increased to 20,000 after the start of the civil war, according to a 2017 Amnesty International report.

The Association of Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison now has an office in Damascus, where the vast majority of workers are detained. In May, they moved their headquarters from Gaziantep, Turkey, to the Syrian capital and offer legal advice to families and psychological assistance here. They are responsible for documenting each case and carrying out communication campaigns so that no one forgets what happened. “What we verified did not surprise us because we knew the crimes that the regime was committing. What hurt us was that far fewer prisoners were released alive than expected, there were few of them,” he laments. Hanan Halimahproject director.

This association is putting pressure on the new authorities to provide justice and prosecute “all those whose hands are stained with blood, offer compensation to the victims and help find the missing.” We also demand that Assad be brought to justice in Damascus, even though we know it will not be easy,” says the director. The entrance gate is presided over by a sign with the former dictator’s photo that reads: “Wanted: Bring Assad to justice.”