Sednaya military prison, in Damascus, Syria, once confined not only military defectors, but thousands of dissident civilians, who were subject to brutal beatings, electric shocks, and starvation. In 2017, Amnesty International estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 people were being held there “from every sector of society.” It said they were effectively slated for “extermination”.
Syria’s long civil war reached a turning point when on 8 December 2024, after a two-week upsurge in success, rebel forces took the capital Damascus with little resistance, toppling President Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year regime. The rebel forces immediately began to free inmates from a vast network of detention centers, with the much-feared Sednaya military prison at its core. Survivors’ accounts revealed the extent of the Assad regime’s systematic detention, torture, and secret execution of its opponents, which transformed its already brutal prison system into a weapon of war.
More than 100 new detention facilities had begun operating since the first anti-government protests erupted in 2011. Sited in security compounds, military airports, and under buildings, they were run by four different military, security, and intelligence agencies, which worked independently of each other, with no clear boundaries to their areas of jurisdiction.
Ordinary people – from demonstrators and journalists, to laborers, taxi drivers, and humanitarian workers – were used by the regime to send a chilling message to the entire population. Through arbitrary arrests, executions, and torture, the regime waged war against its own people, placing them in the grip of terror and secrecy. It was a psychological and physical battleground where Assad very nearly won the war. Prisoners faced inhumane conditions, including starvation, untreated wounds, and psychological trauma from overcrowding and lack of sunlight. Thousands perished, subjected to brutal beatings, rape, and electric shocks, often to extract forced confessions, but also simply to punish, intimidate, or humiliate them.
Human Rights groups estimate at least 150,000 people went missing over the years of the civil war, most vanishing into this prison network. Many were killed, either in mass executions or from torture and prison conditions, but the exact number remains unknown.
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