"Rape, disembowelment and crushing of heads" .. Testimonies about 72 methods of torture in Bashar al-Assad's prisons

The prisons of the Assad regime are a symbol of the cruelty and brutality practiced against thousands of Syrian detainees, who lived in the hell of torture and abuse on a daily basis. But what was happening behind the walls of these prisons exceeded the limits of imagination.

The regime's brutal practices have been exposed to the international community more broadly since Bashar al-Assad fled and his regime fell on Sunday, December 8, when thousands of prisoners who had been held for years in these facilities that had become strongholds of human rights violations were released.

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, members of the armed opposition factions, accompanied by Syrian citizens, entered prisons to free detainees, lifting the lid on decades of oppression and torture. The brutality discovered was not limited to the scale alone—the Syrian Human Rights Network reported that more than 157,000 people have been missing since 2011—but also included the methods used by the Assad regime to humiliate detainees, as documented by media reports and human rights organizations.

"Assad's prisons are bursting with entrails"

Inside Assad’s prisons, torture took countless forms, and was systematic and methodical. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which documented more than 72 different methods of torture, methods ranged from electrocution to burning bodies with oil and metal, to methods that included crushing heads between cell walls or inserting nails and needles into detainees’ bodies.

According to the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, the detainees were forced to play animal roles. One of the guards, who the detainees called "Hitler", asked the prisoners to play the roles of animals such as dogs, cats or donkeys. Those who did not comply with these instructions were beaten.

Hundreds of bodies we saw today
In prison #Sednaya
Mustafa Khalifa saw her daily and told me her story in #Al-Satr_Al-Awsat

Mustafa spent 14 terrifying years as a prisoner in Tadmur prison, which is no less terrifying than Sednaya.
Full episode on Shahid pic.twitter.com/iLDycegec2

— Malik Alrougui (@alrougui) December 10, 2024

According to the newspaper, one former detainee confirmed that the jailer called "Hitler" was trying to tame the detainees "like animals", saying "If one praised the dogs, the other had to act and feel jealous and upset." This means that the torture reached the point where the detainees began to live the role of the animal that they were asked to impersonate.

In Mezzeh military prison, prisoners were hung naked and doused with cold water at night during the winter. According to survivors who spoke to the New York Times, detainees were held in inhumane conditions, with cells overcrowded and some prisoners placed in the same cell with others suffering from mental or physical illnesses.

"The Human Slaughterhouse of Saydnaya"

In Saydnaya prison, the atrocities were more systematic. Described by Amnesty International as a “human slaughterhouse,” mass executions were said to take place on a weekly basis, with between 20 and 50 people executed in a single night.

During the opposition members' tour inside Sednaya prison, they were surprised by the presence of a machine or tool called the "automatic piston". Reports indicated that this machine was located in a room designated for executions. It was also said that it was used to dispose of the bodies of those executed by hanging.

Some have speculated that it was also used to execute prisoners alive. Videos of the press, which undoubtedly witnessed horrific human rights violations, have been widely circulated on social media.

This prison was also a center for mass arrests, and the place where the Assad regime threw everyone it saw as a “threat,” from opponents and protesters, including doctors, politicians, and human rights activists, in addition to their family members.

The crime of enforced disappearance was considered one of the most prominent methods of repression, as more than 157,000 people are still missing since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011. Among them, there are 5,274 children and 10,221 women, in addition to thousands of others who were killed under torture, according to the data available so far to the “Syrian Human Rights Network.”

Rape and sexual violence

Within these prisons, sexual violence and rape were widespread and practiced in a “normal and systematic” manner. The British newspaper quoted a detainee named Maryam Khalif as saying that she had been repeatedly raped inside the prison.

Maryam was being held in a three-foot-square basement cell, with six other women, for providing medical supplies to opposition members.

“In the middle of the night, they would take the pretty girls to Colonel Suleiman Jumaa, the head of Branch 320 of the Syrian State Security in Hama, to rape them,” Maryam said. “The brigadier general and his friends would assault them in a bedroom next to his office, which was decorated with a picture of Assad,” the Human Rights Network reported. They would also spray the victims with the strong alcohol arak.

Maryam also said in her speech that she once saw “a prisoner complaining of hunger, so the guards stuffed his face with feces.”

Death was a wish

The director of the Sednaya Prison Detainees Association, former detainee Diab Seria, revealed that “during the period from 2011 to 2021, 30,000 people entered the prison and only about 5,000 left it alive, and we do not have accurate information about the numbers after 2021.”

He explained in an interview with Alhurra TV that the association he runs "obtained verified documents" revealing the existence of "about 1,400 security prisoners, a description given by the regime to prisoners of conscience, political activity, terrorism, and participants in the revolution," until the end of October 2022.

He pointed out that the notorious prison had many practices, "such as torture to death," saying, "There was nothing forbidden in Sednaya prison... Death was actually a wish in this prison," noting that the prison included "salt rooms to put the bodies in until they were transferred to hospitals such as Tishreen and Harasta, and then to the mass graves, when the fighting intensified."

The Syrian Civil Defense organization, known as the "White Helmets," revealed on Tuesday that the search for detainees in secret cells and dungeons in Sednaya prison had ended, confirming that it had not found "any evidence confirming the existence of secret cellars or undiscovered dungeons."

She called for "exerting caution" when receiving and sharing potentially "misleading" information about prisons online, in order to preserve the feelings of the victims' families and not cause them any psychological harm.

Sednaya prison held thousands of people arrested by Bashar al-Assad's regime, and it is believed that some of them were unable to leave with hundreds of detainees during the past two days, due to their presence in tightly closed locations, according to accounts from relatives of the missing and the families.

Sharia threatens to prosecute war criminals

For his part, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, announced that the new authorities in Syria will soon publish “a first list of the names of the most senior people involved in torturing the Syrian people” in order to pursue and hold them accountable.

In a statement published early Tuesday on Telegram, al-Jolani said, “We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security officers and army involved in torturing the Syrian people. We will pursue the war criminals and demand their release from the countries to which they fled so that they may receive their just punishment.”

Sharaa explained that the next government that will take power in Syria will offer “rewards to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes.” He continued: “We have confirmed our commitment to tolerance for those whose hands are not stained with the blood of the Syrian people, and we have granted amnesty to those who were in compulsory service,” stressing that “the blood and rights” of the innocent dead and detainees “will not be wasted or forgotten.”

Source: Agencies