Sednaya Prison
Sednaya Prison ( Sajn Ṣaydnāyā), nicknamed the "Human Slaughterhouse" is a military prison near Damascus in Syria operated by the Syrian government. The prison has been used to hold thousands of prisoners, both civilian detainees and anti-government rebels. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees have perished in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015." Overall, human rights organizations have identified over 27 prisons and detention centers run by Assad's regime around the country where detainees are routinely tortured and killed. A defector from Assad's sources smuggled out tens of thousands of photographs from these prisons, showing the bodies of those who had been murdered. The defector stated that he had personally photographed the dead and that archives of thousand more such photographs of other victims existed. A former inmate of the prison who was detained for participating in a peaceful non-violent protest told Amnesty International that at Sednaya prisoners were forced to choose between dying themselves or killing one of their own relatives or friends. The former inmate also stated that in the first prison he was at, prisoners were also forced into cannibalism, but that prison was "heaven" compared to Sednaya Prison. According to the inmate, the other prison (Branch 215) was "to interrogate" (including through torture), but when that was done, you were moved to Sednaya "to die". Wide variety of inhumane torture practices are carried out in the prison; ranging from perpetual beatings, sexual assaults, decapitations, rapes, burnings to what are known as the "flying carpets". In 2017, the US State Department alleged that a crematorium had been built at the prison to dispose of the bodies of the executed, although Amnesty's investigation did not find evidence of this having happened. About the Sednaya Prison Located north of the Syrian capital Damascus, Sednaya Military Prison is known for its torture of people and innocent civilians that started the revolution in 2011. It is designed for the purpose of quietly slaughtering innocent civilians, men, women, children and the elderly. Even children are born inside the prison due to the brutal rape of the women by the guards. Not only women are raped, children and men are also subject to rape and sexual assult. There are different social groups who are at risk. These can be groups of labourers, business people, students, bloggers, university professors, lawyers, doctors, activists defending the rights of minority groups, people helping their neighbours or journalists. Detainees may be either men, women or even children. The prison consists of two buildings with a total of 10,000–20,000 detainees and is under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Defense while operated by the Military Police. Detainees have usually spent months or years in detention elsewhere before being transferred to Sednaya. It was not until after the 2011