Saydnaya Prison: Mapping the Assads’ ‘human slaughterhouse’

A 2017 report by Amnesty International citing ex-guards at the prison found that after the Syrian civil war began in 2011 the White Building was emptied of existing prisoners, and prepared instead to house those detained for taking part in protests opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

One former officer told Amnesty that “after 2011, [Saydnaya] became the main political prison in Syria”.

The organisation also quoted testimony from former prisoners claiming that those held in the Red Building were frequently exposed to various methods of torture, including severe beatings, rape and denial of access to food and medicine.

Housed beneath the White Building is what those speaking to Amnesty called an “execution room”, where detainees in the Red Building would be transported to be hanged.

A former guard said that a list of those to be executed from the Red Building would arrive at lunchtime. Troops would then take those marked for death to a basement holding cell – which could sometimes contain up to 100 people – where they were subjected to beatings.

Prisoners who spoke to Amnesty said detainees in the Red Building were typically “transferred” from the building in the dead of night – usually between midnight and 03:00.

Blindfolded detainees were then led down a flight of stairs into the “execution room” in the south-east section of the White Building, before being led up onto a one metre-high platform with 10 nooses from which they were hanged.

According to Amnesty, in 2012 the room was expanded, with a second platform with 20 more nooses. In footage shared by rebel-affiliated media after the fall of the regime, fighters displayed dozens of nooses they found in rooms around Saydnaya.

It is estimated by rights groups that more than 30,000 detainees had either been executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation between 2011 and 2018. Citing accounts from the few released inmates, at least another 500 detainees had been executed between 2018 and 2021, the Association of the Missing and Detainees in Saydnaya Prison (AMDSP) said in 2022.

In 2017, the US State Department claimed that authorities had constructed a possible crematorium on the site to dispose of the remains of murdered prisoners. In the images below, a small wing can be seen adjoining the White Building.