Worthy Christian News > World News > Syrian Freed Prisoners Relive Horrors (Worthy News In-Depth)

Syrian Freed Prisoners Relive Horrors (Worthy News In-Depth)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

DAMASCUS (Worthy News) – Thousands of inmates have stumbled out of blood-stained horror prisons since rebel forces overran Damascus on Saturday, with many confirming accounts from Christians who were held there.

“Sednaya is the end of life, the end of humanity,” testified a former guard in 2017 about the Syrian prison that survivors say became “a symbol of the Bashar al-Assad regime’s brutality.”

At Sednaya Prison, where prisoners were tortured, starved, and killed, people cheered, cried, and shouted as they poured out of the gates two days after Assad was forced to flee to Russia.

Among the freed inmates was a former pilot who refused to bomb the city of Hama over 40 years ago, a 3-year-old child imprisoned with the mother, and a teenager who had spent his entire life in the prison and was filmed uttering the only word he knew: “Halap” or “Aleppo.”

Rescuers pulled around 700 people from the prison, said Ammar Anselmo, a board member of the White Helmets, Syria’s volunteer first responders.

But the prison was believed to hold around 3,000 – at least 2,000 were likely killed and buried, Anselmo said. “We will face hundreds of mass graves,” he said.

“But now, we are trying to observe what’s happened, trying to support the living and to provide emergency services in the cities.”

HUMAN SLAUGHTERHOUSE

In footage seen by Worthy News, women searched between bodies for loved ones.

The Sednaya prison, also known as “the human slaughterhouse,” is located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The complex is divided into two buildings: the Red Building, for civilians, and the White Building, where military officers and soldiers were typically held, according to witnesses.

Human rights group Amnesty International said at its peak, about 20,000 people were held in the prison at the same time.

Though the White Helmets opened each of the cages, including deep underground, it was unclear how survivors would overcome their traumas as they walked into the daylight they had not seen in years.

Survivors described being held in darkness, in freezing cells with floors covered in blood. Blankets and clothing were confiscated if prisoners dared to speak or sleep without permission, they said.

Family members were also forced to torture one another under threat of execution. “The scenes I witnessed will never leave my memory,” testified a 49-year-old man who spent one year in Sednaya before being released this week. “I can’t forget the image of an elderly man covered in blood,” added the man whose name was not released amid security concerns.

FREEZING HALLWAYS

Others testified “being stuffed into car tires” and beaten until they lost consciousness, waking up naked in freezing hallways.

One witness recalled seeing a teenager die from his injuries after being doused in fuel and set on fire by guards.

At a prison near the Mezzeh Air Force base, southwest of Damascus, witnesses reported a guard who called himself “Hitler” forced prisoners to mimic dogs, cats, or donkeys. Those who refused were beaten and tortured.

A prisoner said that in one month, 19 of his cellmates died “due to illness, torture, or neglect.”

In a 2019 report, the Britain-based Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) documented 72 methods of torture allegedly used in Assad’s prisons.

These included electrocution of genitals, burns inflicted with oil, metal rods, gunpowder, or flammable pesticides, as well as crushing heads between walls and doors and inserting needles or metal pins into bodies.

Recently released footage also showed iron presses, likely used to crush bones or execute prisoners. Witnesses said that mass hangings of prisoners were a frequent occurrence.

MANY KILLED

The SNHR’s latest report from March of this year estimated that more than 230,000 Syrians have been killed since the start of the civil war in 2011, including over 15,000 who died under torture.

Nearly 157,000 civilians were detained, many of whom “disappeared,” according to investigators. Fourteen million Syrians were displaced, with many fleeing to Europe, official figures show.

Some died just days before rebels overran Damascus, including a Syrian activist who had previously lived in the Netherlands, Worthy News learned Wednesday.

Mazen Hamada, who had bravely testified about atrocities in Syria in the Netherlands, was found dead in the infamous Sednaya.

In footage reviewed by Worthy News, he testified about being beaten and sexually abused by guards. Yet his return to Syria under unclear circumstances in 2020 had already raised fears for his safety.

These fears proved well-founded as he was reportedly killed in the prison shortly before the liberation, activists said. Hamada, who would have been 47 had he survived the fall of Assad, was reportedly severely beaten once again before his death.

His recorded testimony confirmed statements from former Christian Syrian refugees who said Assad pressured and used the Christian community to divide and rule over different factions with different ethnic and religious affiliations.

CHRISTIAN DOCTOR

While some churches could operate openly, devoted Christians seen as opposing his rule were jailed.

When, in 2012, fighting between anti-Assad forces and the Syrian Army escalated following a massacre of over 100 civilians in Houla, northwest of Homs, Dr. Haissam Saad’s life changed forever.

The Christian doctor was filmed treating political dissident Riad Seif, one of the many wounded flooding hospitals in Damascus as the army repressed anti-Assad protests.

Soon after, the surgeon was detained by a branch of Syrian intelligence and imprisoned, he told the respected Middle East Eye (MEE) news website.

Many of the dozens of prisoners sharing Saad’s cramped, unheated cell died from the cold during the winter months, he recalled. Others bled to death after the guards’ frequent beatings.

“When you are tortured with electricity by five people at the same time, you would rather die a thousand times. I tried to end my life by banging my head against the walls, to no avail,” Dr. Saad said, speaking from his Parisian living room.

“After a few weeks of this hell, I begged my torturers to execute me,” he added. But a guard objected: “‘Mr. Doctor is a Christian; we can’t finish him off,’ he said.”

THREE FINGERS

Saad paused his story to show three fingers of his left hand, the MEE reporter noticed.

He could not move them since the day they were broken under torture. “But to me,” he said, his expression darkening, “all these pains are nothing compared to the tragedy that followed.”

When Saad was released in June 2013, he learned that his son, having deserted the army, had been killed by “a loyalist sniper.”

Other Christians were forced into dangerous front-line positions in this mainly Muslim nation, according to witnesses.

Najwa, who declined to give her family name for fear of being identified, told the MEE that she felt nauseous when pleading with a Syrian Army officer for information about her missing son, 16-year-old Hani.

She later learned what had happened from a friend of his. Nabil, then 18, told her that a man working with the Syrian army had recruited the two teenagers to join troops based at Tabqa military airport in the northern Raqqa governorate to repel an assault by the Islamic State (IS) group.

“You Christians are our nation’s elite. Bashar [al-Assad] has chosen you to fight,” the recruiter told them, as Nabil later told Najwa.

RETREATING UNIT

The next day, their unit retreated to the government-controlled Ithriya village in Hama province. But they never arrived.

After taking refuge for the night at a farm near the air base, the unit was attacked by Islamic State once again, Najwa recalled.

Nabil was reportedly one of the few who escaped their bullets, hiding in a vehicle. Hani, however, was never found. “And Assad dared to say that he is protecting us?” Najwa said, with tears in her eyes.

That Christian civilians were shot, beaten to death, or left to perish in prison cells under Assad, who presented himself as “their protector,” doesn’t surprise Maze Darwish.

The lawyer and president of the non-profit Paris-based Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression was detained by authorities from 2012 to 2015 and declared “a prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International.

He is from Assad’s Alawite minority, but like Assad’s perceived Christian opponents, Darwish, too, suffered behind bars. He said the Assad regime’s logic was: “You’re either with me, or you don’t exist.”