'They ran away barefoot from prison after hearing the cry of Allahu Akbar outside': The story of prisoners released from Syria's notorious Saydnaya prison
Alice Cuddy
Aheda, Damascus
December,14,2024.
Warning: Some parts of this article may be disturbing to readers.
It was a defining moment in the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria when rebels freed prisoners from the country's notorious prisons. The BBC has spoken to four of the prisoners who have been released, who have told their stories of the abuse they suffered.
The prisoners sat up in shock after hearing screams outside their cell.
A man's voice called out, "Is there anyone?" but they were too scared to answer.
For years they had understood that the opening of the door meant beatings, rape and other punishments, but that day the noise meant freedom.
With a cry of "Allahu Akbar," the prisoner looked out through a hole in the iron gate. Instead of guards, he saw rebels outside.
"We said we are here, set us free," says Qasim al-Qublani, 30.
The door was shot open and Qasim ‘ran out barefoot.’
Like the other prisoners, he didn’t look back and just kept running.
‘They came to free us and said, ‘Everyone get out, everyone get out.’ I ran out of the prison but I was so scared that I looked back because I thought they were going to put me back in.’
He didn’t know that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had left the country and his regime had fallen, but the news soon reached him.
‘It was the best day of my life,’ Adnan recalls. ‘The feeling is indescribable. It’s like someone has come out of the mouth of death.’
Qasim and Adnan were among four prisoners who spoke to the BBC after their release from Saydnaya prison.
The prison is so infamous that it is also known as the ‘human slaughterhouse.’
All former prisoners have told stories of torture by guards, murders of fellow prisoners, corruption by prison officials, and forced confessions in this prison.
We were also shown the prison cell of a former prisoner, while families of missing people held in Saydnaya are also searching for answers.
Adnan Ahmed Ghanem says he ran out of the prison but was so scared that he looked back because he thought they were going to put him back in.
A military hospital has also been found by rebel fighters with several bodies. They are believed to be those of Saydnaya prisoners, and doctors have identified the torture they suffered.
Human rights group Amnesty International has called for justice under Syrian law for the crimes and for the treatment of political prisoners. Its 2017 report accused authorities of torturing and killing prisoners at Saydnaya prison.
Saydnaya prison is surrounded by barbed wire and is a large complex located on a mountainous barren land. It was built in the early 1980s and was used for decades to imprison opponents of the Assad family.
It has been described as the country's main political prison since the 2011 protests. A Turkish-based NGO dubbed it a “death camp.”
Prisoners told us they were sent to Saydnaya prison because of their real or perceived ties to the Free Syrian Army, an opposition group to Assad. Some were also imprisoned here because the Assad family was not liked in the area where they lived.
Some prisoners were charged with serious charges, such as kidnapping, killing soldiers, and terrorism. All say they were tortured or coerced into confessing.
They were given long prison sentences and even death sentences. One prisoner said he had been held there for four years but had never been brought before a court.
They were held in the red building of the prison, which was reserved for dissidents.
Amnesty International’s 2017 report accused authorities of torturing prisoners at Saydnaya prison.
Qassem says he was arrested in 2016 for crossing a roadblock and charged with terrorism for the Free Syrian Army. He was sent to several detention centers and later transferred to Saydnaya prison.
“After you pass through that gate, you are a dead man,” he says, watching an interview from his home in a town south of Damascus. “That’s where the torture starts.”
He recalls being stripped naked for a photo and forced to look at the camera. He was then chained to a wall and led away with other prisoners. Their faces were turned to the ground.
He was placed in a small cell with five other men. He was given a uniform to wear but was not given food or water for several days.
They were then taken to the main cell of the prison, where there are no beds in the rooms and one light bulb. There is a small toilet area on the edge.
When we visited the prison this week, there were blankets, clothes and food lying on the prison floor. A man who lived in the prison from 2019 to 2022 showed us his cell.
He says that he had two fingers and a thumb amputated in the same prison.
They showed the scratches they had made on the prison walls. They bent down and cried at the sight.
Each cell held about 20 men, but it was still difficult to get to know each other. They could only speak in hushed tones because the guards on guard could see and hear everything.
“Everything was forbidden,” says Qasim. “You were only allowed to eat, drink, sleep and die.”
Sydnaya was a place of constant violence. Former prisoners told us they were beaten with metal objects, cables and electric batons.
Adnan was arrested in 2019 for the kidnapping and murder of a soldier. “They would enter the cell and beat us all over the body,” he says. “I would sit there in horror and wait for my turn.”
“Every night we thanked God that we were alive. Every morning we prayed that China would let us die.”
Qasim says that after his family paid the guards, they began to improve their behavior in prison.
Adnan and two other recently released prisoners said that they were sometimes forced to sit on their knees with their heads bent, and a stick was inserted through their middle to prevent them from moving, and then a car tire was driven over their bodies before being beaten.
The forms of punishment varied for each person.
Qasim said that two prison officers held him upside down in a drum of water until they felt he was about to suffocate.
“I saw death with my own eyes,” he said. “They would do this when a prisoner was found awake at night, talking loudly, or having a problem with another prisoner.”
Two other released prisoners testified to sexual assaults by guards.
One prisoner said that if a prisoner was hungry, he would be offered oral sex with the guards in exchange for food.
Three prisoners said that the guards would jump on them to inflict maximum pain.
Qasim al-Qublani stood smiling near the trees, wearing a warm coat and hat. He said that he had been tortured with water during his imprisonment.
At a central hospital in Damascus, we met Imad Jamal, 43, whose mother was caring for him, and every time his mother touched him during the care, Imad would groan in pain.
When asked about his time in prison, he said in broken English, “We were not allowed to eat or sleep. Beatings, fighting, illness. Nothing was normal there.”
According to Imad, he was held under “political arrest.” He was arrested in 2021 because of the area he came from.
Speaking again in Arabic, Imad said his back was broken when he was forced to sit on the ground with his knees bent and a guard jumped on him as punishment.
According to Imad, his crime was that he had stolen medicine from another prisoner for a friend.
But the hardest thing for Imad in prison was the cold. “Even the walls were cold. I became a living corpse.”
Nothing in the prison was good for the prisoners, but three of the prisoners said that even if something good had happened, the punishments would have been harsher.
A 30-year-old prisoner, Rukan Muhammad al-Saeed, says he was detained in 2020 on charges of murder and kidnapping, but then the case against him could not be prosecuted.
According to him, “During detention, every time we took a bath, went out into the sunlight, or stepped outside the cell door, we were punished.”
He shows his broken teeth, saying that they were broken when a guard punched him in the face.
Everyone we spoke to said that everyone in their cell was killed.
The guards would come into the cell and call out the names of the people they were to take with them, and then they would never see them again.
“No one was hanged in front of us,” says 30-year-old prisoner Rukan Muhammad al-Saeed.
“Every time they called out names at midnight, we knew they were being taken to be killed.”
Others have said the same thing. They say there is no way to know what happened to those who were taken away.
Qasim’s father and other relatives say his family had to pay prison officials $10,000 to stop them from killing him. After receiving a bribe, the prisoners’ sentences were reduced, meaning the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and then to 20 years in prison.
Qasim says that after his family paid the guards, the officers’ behavior towards him in prison improved, but his father says that they “flatly refused to accept any bribes in exchange for their release.”
The families of the detained suspects used to send them money for food and drink, but he says that the corrupt officials kept most of the money for themselves and gave the prisoners limited rations in return. In some prisons, all the prisoners would gather their food in one place, but it was still not enough to satisfy their hunger.
For Adnan, the hunger was even more difficult to bear than the beatings. “I would go to sleep and then wake up hungry,” he said.
“The punishment we were given in a month was that one day they would give us a piece of bread to eat. The next day they would give us half a piece, and then a very small piece. If this piece were to run out, we would have no bread to eat.’
Qasim says that one day the guards put curd on the face of our cell leader and then told us to lick it now.
Due to the lack of food, all the prisoners lost a lot of weight. Qasim says that my dream was to ‘be blessed with a full stomach to eat.’
His family also paid the guards to visit him. According to his father, he was sometimes brought down in a wheelchair because he was so emaciated that he could not walk.
Diseases spread rapidly, but the prisoners had no way to prevent them.
Two of the people we spoke to were released on Sunday. They say that ‘they contracted TB in Saydnaya prison.’
One of them told us that their medicine was withheld as a punishment.
Adnan says that the diseases contracted from fear were much worse than the physical illnesses.
This week, an official at a Damascus hospital said that most of the prisoners they sent for check-ups had psychological problems.
Hearing these words, it seemed as if there was no hope, only pain.
The prisoners spent most of their time in silence. They had no contact with the outside world. So it is no wonder that they say they did not know that Bashar al-Assad’s regime had fallen. They only believed it when they were released from the prisons.
Qasim says that before the noise of some people in the corridor, he heard sounds like helicopters taking off from the hospital grounds. Then the prison doors would open and the prisoners would run as fast as they could.
“We ran from the prison. We ran away from fear,” says Rukan. He had his children and wife on his mind.
He says that in the chaos, a car hit him at one point. “But I didn’t care. I got up and started running again.”
He says that he will never go to Saidiana prison again.
Adnan, who fled to Damascus, also said he could not imagine going back to prison.
“It is impossible for me to describe these feelings,” he said.
Every night before going to bed, he fears that he will wake up in prison and realize that it was all a dream.
Qasim ran to the town of Tal Minin. There he met a woman who was giving food, money and clothes to released prisoners, and she told him that “Bishara Sad’s regime has fallen.”
He was taken to his hometown, where gunfire erupted in celebration and his family hugged him in tears.
“It is like I have been reborn,” he said.
Additional reporting by Nihad Al-Salim
Related topics:
#Violence #Syria #Human_rights #Middle_East
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