In the days since the fall of the Assad regime, throngs of Syrians have been making their way up the steep hill just north of Damascus. Their destination is Sednaya—the regime’s most notorious prison, torture complex, and death camp that has long been a symbol of the regime’s brutality. They come searching for loved ones among the thousands of newly released prisoners.
Our cameraman was among those who made this pilgrimage. In collaboration with The Center for Peace Communications, we gained unprecedented access to Sednaya, capturing exclusive footage from inside its underground dungeons and recording the unvarnished testimonies of survivors—those lucky enough to emerge alive from what many have called a human slaughterhouse.
“They would call out names at dawn, strip the prisoners of their clothes, and take them away,” recalls Ahmed Abd Al-Wahid, a former inmate who endured years of captivity. “We knew from the sound of chains on the platforms that these were executions. Condemned prisoners wouldn’t be fed for three days prior. Once a month, they would search us. During one such search, an officer declared, ‘We’re not here to inspect; we’re here to kill.’ ”
This was not just a prison—it was a factory of death. Executions were carried out by the hundreds. Bodies were crushed with industrial presses or burned in crude crematoriums. Victims were lashed to the edge of life. And the dulab—a torture wheel—was used to stretch prisoners until their bodies snapped. These weren’t random acts of cruelty; they were Bashar al-Assad’s systematic weapons to crush dissent and spread terror.
The scale of atrocities is staggering. According to one human rights group, since the anti-government protests began in 2011, over 96,000 people have disappeared into Syria’s vast network of secret prisons. Another 40,000 have been documented as prisoners. These numbers include thousands of women and children—some as young as toddlers. Most of them didn’t make it out alive. The overwhelming majority were tortured to death.
Click below for our exclusive, firsthand look inside Assad’s most notorious prison—mere days after its gates were flung open earlier this week.
