Despairing Syrians search notorious Sednaya prison for missing relatives

As families desperately scoured the filthy cells of Syria’s forbidding Sednaya prison on Monday (December 9, 2024) for any sign of long-detained relatives after its gates were flung open by rebels, hope for finding missing loved ones began to fade.

Thousands of prisoners spilled out of president Bashar al-Assad’s pitiless detention system after he was toppled on Sunday (December 8, 2024), sometimes to tearful reunions with relatives who believed they had been executed years earlier.

But countless families were still trawling dark corridors and hidden cells in the labyrinthine complex for a trace of loved ones detained for attending protests, defying authorities or simply voicing discontent.

Ahmed Najjar had come to Damascus from Aleppo, hoping to find his brother’s two children, seized by Mr. Assad’s security forces in 2012.

“We’re looking. They’re saying there’s an underground prison,” he said.

Rumours spread on Sunday (December 8, 2024) that thousands more inmates were still imprisoned in underground cells that could not be reached.

The White Helmets rescue organisation, which for years has dug through fallen buildings after air strikes, deployed a team.

“They had a map from a defected Syrian Army officer and broke down one wall and found nothing,” said one of the rescue workers. “They broke a second and found a door.”

But by Monday afternoon (December 9, 2024) there was no sign of more prisoners.

Outside, Intsar al-Jaber sat waiting for news. The 45-year-old’s brother and cousin were imprisoned in Sednaya but she had not been allowed to see them since 2014.

People run towards Sednaya prison as members of the Syrian civil defence group, known as the White Helmets search for prisoners underground in Sednaya, Syria on December 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

“They told me then that my brother was dead and not to come back. [They said] ‘Your brother is a terrorist, and he died, so there’s nothing for you here. Don’t come’.” But she continued to wait and hope.

At a mosque on the road to the prison, people were registering names and phone numbers in case imprisoned relatives were found.

One woman said she had seen her son in a screenshot of released prisoners on Sunday (December 8, 2024).

Sednaya’s crematorium for hanged prisoners

Rights groups have reported mass executions in Syria’s prisons, and the United States said in 2017 it had identified a new crematorium at Sednaya for hanged prisoners. Torture was widely documented.

Videos have emerged of some shaven-headed, near-skeletal prisoners barely able to give their names or say where they were from. Reuters was not able to verify them all but the large-scale freeing of prisoners is not in dispute.

Inside the solitary confinement cells, there was water and mud on the concrete floors. Each had a single metal bowl for food. Excrement lay around.

Members of the Syrian civil defence group, known as the White Helmets, search for prisoners underground at Sednaya prison, with rebel fighters around, in Sednaya, Syria on December 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

People searching the prison rifled through discarded papers and asked former inmates if they knew of routes to other storeys, while others smashed down walls or drilled into the floor searching for hidden cells.

Several times, a breakthrough revealed a hidden hallway, prompting bursts of gunfire from rebels to alert the thousands waiting.

Each time, a crowd dashed forward. One woman screamed “My son, I’m coming, I’m coming” while another pleaded, “God, please don’t disappoint me”.

A man called Mazen said Mr. Assad’s police had taken 10 of his relatives including his uncle, his brother-in-law and siblings and cousins.

“We got a video here to a secret door. I gave it to the rescue workers. They are trying to dig but they haven’t got anything yet,” he said.

Fadel Abdul Ghany, who heads the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said the fact that the prison doors had simply been flung open had made it harder to trace inmates, and set genuine criminals free alongside political prisoners.

“They need to run this as well, just like they’re trying to manage other things, keep things under control,” he said.

Outside the prison, where traffic once passed quickly, with passengers’ eyes averted, a long queue of cars waited to get in while others scrambled across the scrubby countryside on foot and cut barbed wire fences to join the crowds searching inside.

One of those, Radwan Eid, called Sednaya “the human butcher’s shop”.

“The blood that was spilled here cannot just run,” he said. “They must be held to account.”