All about Syria’s Saydnaya prison, from where thousands of prisoners have been freed

All about the Saydnaya prison

The Saydnaya prison, also spelt Sednaya, was established in the 1980s in a small town nearly 30 kilometres north of the capital Damascus. Efforts to construct the prison had begun in 1978. According to a BBC report, Saydnaya was administered by the Syrian military police for decades, with the first detainees arriving in 1987.

In its 2017 report titled “Human Slaughterhouse”, Amnesty International provided a deeper understanding of the prison for the first time, relying on the testimonies of former inmates to generate a 3D model.

According to the report, the prison contained two detention centres: the “Red Building” and the “White Building”. Each centre has a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 people. The L-shaped red building detained civilians, mostly those arrested since the 2011 civil war began.

The white building, described by former guards as a “Mercedes wheel” owing to its shape, primarily detained Syrian military staff believed to be disloyal to the regime. It featured “a central, circular hub with three long, straight corridors protruding from this hub.”

According to the report, suspected members of Islamist groups were incarcerated in the red building until 2011, when they were released or transferred to other prisons. Over the last decade, it was used to detain political prisoners who were believed to be critical of the regime or involved in the rebellion. Detainees were rarely released from either building, while those who secured a release were often compelled to pay a bribe.

A 2022 report by the Association of Detainees and the Missing of Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) titled “The Administrative Structure and Organizational Ties of Sednaya Prison” describes how Saydnaya was guarded by three levels of security, entrusted with protecting the prison and monitoring and disciplining the incarcerated.

Why was Saydnaya called the “Human Slaughterhouse”?

Amnesty estimated that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were “extrajudicially executed” at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015, while thousands more were likely to have been put to death since then. Some rights groups have described Saydnaya as a death camp, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organisation based in the UK estimating that over 30,000 detainees were killed in Saydnaya alone.

Survivors have detailed harrowing accounts of prison transfers after midnight, from the red and white buildings to a designated “execution room” in the basement of the white building. According to the BBC, blindfolded detainees were led up a one-metre-high platform with 10 nooses from which they would be hanged. This room was expanded in 2012, according to the Amnesty report, and a second platform with 20 more nooses was installed. The room also contained three cells, and up to 100 prisoners would be taken for execution.

The odds of survival were just as bleak, with a 2024 UN report titled “The Syrian Government Detention System as a Tool of Violent Repression” describing that the prison was extraordinarily filthy, violent, and lethal to its detainees, who died from inhumane detention conditions, severe beatings, torture, illness, starvation, and dehydration.” Some prisoners were forced to drink their own urine to survive, and prisoners were packed in overcrowded cells.  

The US State Department in 2017 alleged that a crematorium had been constructed to bury thousands of executed prisoners. The then-acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones said that a building in Saydnaya had been modified “to support” the possible crematorium.

Were “hidden underground cells” uncovered?

In a statement released on Monday, the volunteer organisation Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, said that they had concluded the search operations for “possible remaining detainees in potential undiscovered secret cells and basements within the infamous Sednaya Prison.”

Sunday’s breakthrough brought with it concerns of people trapped underground and “choking to death” in Saydnaya. According to the BBC, the Damascus Countryside Governorate appealed on social media to former members of Assad’s administration to “provide the rebel forces with the codes to electronic underground doors.”

The White Helmets said it had deployed five teams to the prison, accompanied by a guide familiar with its layout. These included wall-breaching specialists, crews to open iron doors, trained dogs, and medical responders.

On Monday, the group said it had found “no evidence of undiscovered secret cells or basements” in the prison.

The group also urged people on social media to avoid spreading misinformation.