The celebrations in Damascus were interrupted by a rumor: on the outskirts of the city they had found a door leading to an extensive underground complex five stories deep where the last prisoners of the Al Assad regime were gasping for air.
The cars rushed towards the Sednaya prison. Known as “the human slaughterhouse,” it is the best-known torture complex in the Syrian regime’s extensive network of detention centers. We followed the cars, with traffic stopping and rumors circulating through the rolled down windows. There are 1,500 prisoners trapped underground who need rescuing, the rumor went, and your loved ones may be among them.
People left their cars on the side of the road and started walking. A procession illuminated by the flashlight of thousands of mobile phones passed through the doors of the prison complex. The same doors through which people entered but did not leave, until early Sunday morning when the rebels took control of the facilities.
On the grounds of the prison complex, there were families gathering around bonfires to keep warm without losing sight of the prison door, in case they could recognize the people leaving. A crowd advanced towards the prison unfazed by the rounds that the rebel militants fired into the air to prevent them from entering.
Inside the labyrinthine facility, people went from cell to cell looking for clues that could help them find family and friends. A race began to locate the hidden underground wing, which they called the “red wing,” fearing that the people held there were without food and air, suffocating and starving. “Three members of my family are missing, they have told us that there are four underground levels and that there are people inside suffocating, but we don’t know where they are,” said Ahmad al-Shnein while searching a prison corridor. “Those who left here looked like skeletons, imagine the state of those who are still underground.”
The prison seems to have been built to give its residents the feeling of being nowhere. In the center is an endless spiral staircase, when viewed from the ground floor, surrounded by metal bars. Behind them, large identical armored doors give way to the three wings of the facility. According to rebel fighters, each wing specialized in a different form of torture. There are no windows to the outside.
On Sunday, people milled around the metal staircase. They entered and left through the doors but always ended up returning to the center. Apparently, the rebel fighters were no better informed. One of them had found a map and the crowd gathered around him as he pored over the two-foot document, a virtually illegible scrawl on the paper.
Beatings and torture
The cells where the prisoners had been crammed were full of blankets and clothes, discarded that same day by the prisoners after their sudden release. Some had jagged holes in the walls, where more prisoners had been locked up. Videos on Sunday showed fighters freeing prisoners, who had to be encouraged to leave, unable to believe that they could really do it.
Just a few meters wide, the narrow cells had been filled with more than a dozen people without space to lie down, according to human rights organizations. The screams of the tortured prisoners echoed in the corridors.
According to Amnesty International estimates, there were up to 20,000 prisoners in Sednaya. Most of them imprisoned after a secret mock trial that ended in a matter of minutes. Among the brutal beatings and torture that survivors said they suffered daily at the hands of guards included rape and electric shocks. Many prisoners were tortured to death.
Inside the prison, the guards imposed a rule of absolute silence. The detainees could not speak but they could write and the walls of the cells are covered with hand-scribbled messages. “Enough, take me,” said one of those messages.
Torn and trampled, a piece of paper found on the ground detailed the death of an inmate. The text had the signature of Mohammed Abdulfatah al-Jassem, a 63-year-old inmate who apparently wanted to document the death of his friend (his name is illegible). The note described how he had fallen and hit his head during a seizure. He added a phone number for the person who found the paper. When we called that phone number, there was no answer.
In the chaos that ensued during the release of the prisoners, people searching for relatives took away record books, full of names and other information. Outside the prison, people gathered around those books looking for familiar names.
Human rights organizations have warned of the need to preserve records in an orderly manner to document the fate of the approximately 136,000 people detained by the Al Assad regime.
Somewhere in the prison screams began to be heard and people began to run. Someone had broken a door. He said he had heard a voice coming from below. The combatants shouted for calm while hundreds of people gathered to see who could be down. They got to work and the sound of a shovel against the padlock echoed in the metal fortress.
On Monday, the Syrian civil defense organization issued a statement: despite an intensive search of the facility, no prisoners trapped underground have been found. They warned the population not to get their hopes up due to the rumors and false information that was circulating.
For many, Sednaya was the last hope of finding missing loved ones. Yamen al-Alaay, an 18-year-old from the Damascus countryside leaving Sednaya, said he had been going from prison to prison looking for his missing uncle in 2017. “We arrived today and we have searched and searched, but we have not found nothing; those from the ‘red wing’ have not yet been found,” added al-Alaay, from the rural outskirts of Damascus. The next day he would return, he said.
Late at night many people were leaving Sednaya and thousands of people were still arriving from Damascus. One of those coming asked one of those leaving: “Have you found anyone? Has anyone new appeared?” The man who was leaving responded quietly: “No, but I hope so tomorrow.”
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