Syria’s Sednaya prison sits on a barren hill north of Damascus, with towering brick-and-wire walls that encircle the compound like a noose. Long unbreachable, the prison doors at the terrifying complex were smashed open by rebels who overthrew President Bashar al-Assad.
Arrests and disappearances were part of the Assad regime’s modus operandi for decades. From across the country, thousands of Syrians of every generation converge here, scrambling to find any hint of what happened to missing loved ones.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
Syrians want to learn what happened to those who were jailed or forcibly disappeared as they seek to recover from decades of a brutal dictatorship. For many, the first, difficult stop is a notorious prison.
Without the truth, some say, healing is impossible. But unveiling the truth is a traumatizing journey that is fueling calls for revenge.
No one is getting the answers they want at Sednaya. What they get instead is a horrifying glimpse into the inner workings of a regime propped up by fear and torture.
One young woman, Alaa, ventures toward the rooms that former Sednaya inmates describe as torture chambers. She says she has long given up hope of finding her father, who disappeared in 2015 when she was only 11 years old.
“I hope he died right away rather than spending a single second in this place,” she says. “There can be no justice for something like this. … It is important for Syrians to know what happened.”
Syria’s Sednaya prison sits on a barren hill 19 miles north of the capital, Damascus, sealed off from the world by towering brick-and-wire walls that encircle the compound like a noose.
From across the country, thousands of Syrians of every generation converge at this spot, scrambling to find any hint of what happened to missing loved ones who were jailed or forcibly disappeared. The truth is dark and elusive, but it’s their best shot at closure, and many start their search here.
Dressed in Bedouin attire, Amash al-Farhan scrutinizes burnt and torn documents that he cannot decipher. He traveled more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from Syria’s border with Iraq to Damascus looking for a sign of his son. The medical and prison logs that remain offer no promising clues.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
Syrians want to learn what happened to those who were jailed or forcibly disappeared as they seek to recover from decades of a brutal dictatorship. For many, the first, difficult stop is a notorious prison.
“I thought to myself, perhaps God will deliver him back to me,” he says, gripped by emotion. “Dead or alive, the important thing is for one to know. I just want to know where he is.”
Long unbreachable, the prison doors at the terrifying complex were smashed open by rebels who overthrew President Bashar al-Assad in a multipronged military campaign that seized control of the capital.
Mr. Assad fled to Moscow, reducing the likelihood that he will face justice for the crimes committed by his regime.
A traumatizing journey
Dubbed the “slaughterhouse” by rights groups and Syrians, Sednaya is just one element in a macabre mosaic of prisons across Syria. The systemic violence of such sites explains the death and disappearance of tens of thousands of Syrians under Mr. Assad, and his father, Hafez al-Assad, before him. The quest for clarity sends men, women, and children through a labyrinth of official and unofficial detention centers.
Without the truth, some say, healing is impossible. But unveiling the truth is a traumatizing journey that is fueling calls for revenge and accountability.
It risks becoming a messy process in a low-trust society scarred by more than a decade of war that drew in foreign powers, including regional ones animated by sectarian logic. All sectors of society are affected.
Arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances have been part of the Syrian regime’s modus operandi for decades. The Syrian Network for Human Rights blames Syrian regime forces for more than 96,000 cases of enforced disappearances since 2011, when antiregime protests erupted. Yet some families are today trying to trace disappearances that long predate the civil war.
Between tears, Mr. Farhan says his son Khaled was taken from a farm in Khan al-Sheikh, along with seven young male friends, in the Euphrates River region of Deir ez-Zor.
On what grounds? The father simply says he was “with them,” a reference to the rebels who armed themselves in self-defense after antiregime demonstrations were violently suppressed by a wide constellation of security forces and the Syrian army.
One young woman, Alaa, ventures toward the rooms that former Sednaya inmates describe as torture chambers. Wearing a puffy parka, her young face framed by a black hijab, she says she has long given up hope of finding her father, who disappeared from the Golan Heights city of Quneitra in 2015 when she was only 11 years old.
“I hope he died right away rather than spending a single second in this place,” she says. “There can be no justice for something like this. … It is important for Syrians to know what happened.”
Nearby, Hiam, an older woman, repeats the names of her three missing sons like a mantra.
A prisoner’s story
The tales of survivors bring little comfort. Among those visiting Sednaya is Mahmoud Fakhoura, a young man wearing a red varsity sweater and sports cap, who says he survived seven years there. He says he was arrested on bogus terrorism charges for participating in the revolution.
“I never raised my head during my time in this prison,” Mr. Fakhoura says. “All I could see were military boots.”
A shell-shocked but sympathetic crowd forms around him as he recounts the hunger, beatings, and endless humiliation that he personally endured. He says he barely survived a monthslong spell in solitary confinement, fed only half an orange per day.
The crowd appeals to God as he tells of mass executions and the burning smells that followed.
No one is getting the answers they want at Sednaya. What they get instead is a horrifying glimpse into the inner workings of an authoritarian regime propped up by fear and torture, as is amply evident by equipment left behind in one prison room.
Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor
Horror at the morgue
In the capital’s largest morgue, at Damascus Hospital, the anguish of presumed loss turns to burning rage.
Visitors’ eyes widen in horror at the sight of the mutilated and emaciated bodies filling the morgue. About two dozen bodies have been brought from Sednaya and various other security facilities.
Children take in the scene in stunned silence. Mothers, sisters, and nurses cover their mouths and cry. Men vow revenge.
Abdelkarim Alshafi, who did a stint at Sednaya himself, opens cold container after container looking for five relatives who disappeared between 2013 and 2018.
“They were arbitrarily arrested in their homes and at checkpoints,” he says. “They [the regime] called us terrorists, but they are the terrorists. We ask that they be held accountable.”
Alaa al-Saadi, a native of Daraa, the southern city considered the birthplace of the 2011 popular uprising, has been looking for his brother since 2013. “There are thousands of prisoners. What did they do to them? The ones that were released are about 400 to 500. Where did the rest, the thousands, go?”
He directs some of his anger at Russia and at Shiite regional powerhouse Iran, which propped up the Assad regime. But the brunt of his rage focuses on Syria’s powerful Alawites, members of a Shiite splinter group to which the Assad family belongs. Alawites have played an outsize role in state institutions and the country’s sprawling security apparatus.
“Anyone who has honor should go after all the Alawites,” he cries, as others try to reason with him and caution against being swept up by sectarian sentiment.
“It’s my right,” he snaps back. “I lost my brother. They are criminals. What is the crime of these burnt bodies here? That they called for freedom? We don’t want Alawites in Syria at all.”
Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor
Inside the hospital, two families argue trying to prove their relationship to a disoriented young man lying on a stretcher.
A doctor settles the dispute, saying that there are no signs of the surgery cited by one of the families trying to identify him. In that same overcrowded room sit an emaciated woman with haunted eyes and an older man whose hands are mutilated. All three patients are said to have been found in Sednaya.
“I want to forget”
Families that do find their loved ones face a difficult journey of recovery.
Badly bruised, unable to stand, and weighing about 95 pounds, Wael Zaarour was just a number at Sednaya – 22789. He was moribund when rebels set Sednaya prisoners free, and is now under the watchful care of his mother in a cold and dark apartment in Homs, 100 miles north of the capital.
The arrival of strangers causes panic. Mr. Zaarour demands to see documents to ensure that foreign journalists are not agents of the recently ousted Syrian government.
“Sednaya is death,” he says later, lifting his shirt to reveal a sea of bruises on his back.
“They would tell us, you are dogs who did not deserve to eat. Killing people became a matter of habit,” he says. “There are so many things I want to forget.”
