INSIDE ASSAD’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE
MASS HANGINGS CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY Beatings RAPE Barbarity DISAPPEARANCES Torture Extermination INHUMANE TREATMENT Electric shocks SECRET EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS
THE BODIES OF THOSE WHO ARE KILLED AT SAYDNAYA ARE TAKEN AWAY BY THE TRUCKLOAD AND BURIED IN MASS GRAVES. IT IS INCONCEIVABLE THAT THESE LARGE- SCALE AND SYSTEMATIC PRACTICES HAVE NOT BEEN AUTHORIZED BY THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT.” — AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Saydnaya prison was known as “the slaughterhouse.” Omar Alshogre, who was arrested at the age of 17, spent time in several detention centres before being taken to Saydnaya where death was always present, “like the air,” he said.
Once when he was deprived of food for two days, a cellmate handed him his food ration — and died days later. Another cellmate died of diarrhea, also common in the prison.
“Death is the simplest thing. It was the most hoped for because it would have spared us a l ot: hunger, thirst, fear, pain, cold, thinking,” he said. “Thinking was so hard. It could also kill.”
But more common than dying of thirst, hunger or disease, was death by mass hangings and torture.
Behind the closed doors of Saydnaya military prison, about 30 kilometres north of Damascus, police hanged as many as 13,000 people over the course of four years. About 20 to 50 people were hanged each week, sometimes there were twice weekly hangings, in what Amnesty International called a “calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution.”
Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty’s regional office in Beirut, said there was no reason to believe the practice had stopped. A new report from Amnesty International covered the period from the start of the March 2011 uprising to December 2015, when Amnesty says between 5,000 and 13,000 people were hanged.
Amnesty said the killings were authorized by senior Syrian officials, including deputies of President Bashar Assad.
“The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” Maalouf said.
In the grounds of the prison was the “white” building containing military officers and soldiers suspected of being disloyal to the Syrian government. The “red” building — known as the Mercedes wheel because of its design — housed political dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, doctors, humanitarian aid workers and students accused of being opposed to the regime.
The report, compiled from guards and survivors of the prison, detailed how prisoners were collected from their cells on the day of execution and informed they were being transferred to a civilian jail. But they were then brought before a tribunal where there was a one or two minute “trial.”
Prisoners were then transferred to a room and beaten for hours.
According to former detainee “Nader”, “( We) would hear a huge sound. From 10 p. m. until 12 a. m. or from 11 p. m. until 1 a. m. we would hear screaming and yelling, coming from below us … these people were screaming like they had lost their minds … It wasn’t a normal sound — it was not ordinary. It sounded like they were skinning them alive.”
From there the victims were taken to a basement cell where nooses lined the walls and mass executions took place.
“The bodies of those who are killed at Saydnaya are taken away by the truckload and buried in mass graves,” said the report.
There were also endless beatings for inmates.
There were beatings, “on the journey after arrest. In transit between detention centres. As part of a ‘ welcome party’ of abuse on arrival at a prison. And in some cases every day for every conceivable minor ‘ breaking’ of rules, including talking or not cleaning their cells,” said the report.
“Many of the people we spoke to said they had been beaten with plastic hose pipes, silicone bars and wooden sticks. Some had been scalded with hot water and burnt with cigarettes. Others were forced to stand in water and given electric shocks.”
Some tortures had their own nicknames; “the flying carpet” where people were strapped face- up on a foldable board and the “tire” where people were forced into a vehicle tire, with their f oreheads pressed onto their knees or ankles, and beaten.
Salam, a l awyer f rom Aleppo who was detained in Saydnaya from 2012 to 2014, described the “welcome” beatings.
“The soldiers will practise their ‘ hospitality’ with each new group of detainees during the ‘ welcome party’ … You are thrown to the ground and they use different instruments for the beatings: electric cables with exposed copper wire ends — they have little hooks so they take a part of your skin — normal electric cables, plastic water pipes of different sizes and metal bars.
“I was blindfolded the whole time, but I would try to see somehow. All you see is blood: your own blood, the blood of others. After one hit, you lose your sense of what is happening. You’re in shock. But then the pain comes.”
The chilling accounts in Tuesday’s report came from interviews with 31 former detainees and over 50 other officials and experts, including former guards and judges.
Alshogre, 21 — who survived nine months in Saydnaya before eventually paying his way out in 2015, a common practice — told The Associated Press the guards would come to his cell, sometimes three times a week, and call out detainees by name.
He would hear detainees being tortured. “Then the sound would stop,” he said.
He described how at times he was forced to keep his eyes closed and his back to the guards while they abused or suffocated a cellmate. The body often would be l eft behind, or there would be a pool of blood in the cell for other prisoners to clean up.
“We already know they will die anyway, so we do whatever we want with them,” Amnesty quoted a former guard as saying.
Alshogre s aid at one point, he was summoned by guards “for execution.” He was brought before a military tribunal and told not to raise his eyes to the judge, who asked him how many soldiers he had killed. When he said none, the j udge spared him.
Alshogre suffered from tuberculosis and his weight fell to 35 kilograms (77 pounds).
Amnesty is demanding a full international investigation into the “crimes against humanity” committed at the prison.
DEATH IS THE SIMPLEST THING. IT WAS THE MOST HOPED FOR BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE SPARED US A LOT: HUNGER, THIRST, FEAR, PAIN, COLD, THINKING … THINKING WAS SO HARD. IT COULD ALSO KILL. — FORMER DETAINEE OMAR ALSHOGRE