Inside Syria’s Notorious Sednaya Prison: A Monument to Assad’s Cruelty

The Silent Terror That Defined a Regime

No place in Syria evoked greater fear than Sednaya prison during the Assad family’s decades-long, iron-fisted rule. Perched ominously on a barren hilltop outside Damascus, this fortress of suffering served as the centerpiece of the regime’s vast torture network designed to crush all opposition voices. By December 2024, when President Bashar al-Assad’s government finally collapsed after nearly 14 years of civil war, Sednaya had become the most haunting symbol of the dictator’s ruthlessness.

Throughout the conflict, the regime’s security apparatus systematically detained hundreds of thousands of activists, journalists, students, and dissidents from across Syria—countless numbers who would never be seen again. Most prisoners entered Sednaya with little hope of survival, forced to watch as fellow detainees withered away physically or simply lost their will to live. According to human rights organizations, tens of thousands were executed within its walls.

The New York Times conducted extensive investigations of Sednaya following the regime’s fall, visiting the complex multiple times, including the day after Assad’s government collapsed. Our team interviewed 16 former prisoners and two former prison officials, while constructing a comprehensive 3-D model of the facility using over 130 videos filmed on location. The testimonies revealed systematic torture, beatings, and the deliberate deprivation of food, water, and medicine. Some former prisoners described witnessing doctors—meant to provide care—savagely beating patients until they died from their injuries.

A System Designed to Destroy the Human Spirit

“Every day we asked ourselves, ‘Will they execute us now?'” recalled Fares al-Diq, a former rebel imprisoned in the complex. “‘What will they do with us today?'” This perpetual uncertainty was a deliberate psychological weapon in the prison’s arsenal of torment.

Constructed in 1987, Sednaya’s main building featured a distinctive Y-shape rising four stories above ground. During the civil war, human rights groups estimate more than 30,000 prisoners died there, many in mass hangings that earned the facility Amnesty International’s grim designation as a “human slaughterhouse.” The actual death toll remains unknown.

Former prisoners incarcerated in recent years described a chilling routine: every few weeks, guards would round up dozens of inmates for execution. The facility was so feared throughout Syria that most citizens dared not even speak its name aloud. When rebel forces finally ousted Assad, the prison complex that had remained shrouded in secrecy for decades was suddenly exposed to public view.

From Cage to Dungeon: The Journey into Hell

The prisoners’ descent into Sednaya’s horrors began with their arrival at the complex, typically transported in cargo trucks while blindfolded with shackled wrists. When the truck doors opened, guards immediately herded new arrivals into an intake area in the main building, shouting orders to keep their heads down while striking them with batons.

Forced to squat with heads between their legs, prisoners had their names registered before being stripped naked and crammed into metal cages lining the walls. These cages, approximately two feet deep and six feet tall, served as the first introduction to the dehumanization that awaited them.

Mohammad al-Buraidi, a 32-year-old musician from Daraa who had joined the rebel movement before attempting to comply with government demands, arrived at Sednaya after already enduring months of torture elsewhere. Like many prisoners interviewed by The Times, al-Buraidi had suffered severely in other detention facilities—in his case, being suspended from the ceiling by his hands for hours daily in a Damascus prison before his transfer to Sednaya.

Upon arrival, guards instructed the men about three fundamental rules that would govern their existence: never ask for food or water; never touch the cell door or request help; and if a cellmate dies, leave the body where it lies.

The conditions in the underground solitary confinement cells were particularly appalling. Prisoners received only minimal bread rations and sometimes resorted to licking sewage water from the floor to survive. They slept sitting upright to avoid contact with the feces covering the floor.

Munzer al-Uthman, arrested in 2020 after defecting from mandatory military service, spent eight days in these underground cells during summer months when the heat became unbearable. “It’s so hot and stuffy down in the underground cell that after a couple of days, you start begging—not for your freedom, but to at least be taken up to the group cells,” he recalled.

When one of al-Uthman’s cellmates collapsed unconscious, another inmate called out for help. Guards responded by dragging the unconscious man into the hallway, savagely beating him with batons until his hands and legs were broken, before throwing him back into the cell. For days, al-Uthman attempted to revive him, even collecting his own urine in cupped hands to provide the man something to drink. Though the man temporarily regained consciousness, he died two months later.

Where Death Was Always Near: Daily Life in Sednaya

After approximately a week in the underground cells, prisoners typically moved to group cells distributed across three wings on the upper floors of the main building. Ehab Mouma, arrested in 2018, endured six years in Sednaya, being relocated between cells every few months as waves of cholera and tuberculosis swept through the prison population.

Each day began around 6 a.m. with the sound of metal clanking as guards conducted their morning rounds. Prisoners were ordered to kneel at the back of their cells, facing away from the door, while guards asked if anyone had died overnight. The inmates were required to use dehumanizing language when reporting deaths.

“We had to tell the officers that we have a ‘carcass’—not a ‘martyr’ or ‘someone who had died,'” Mouma explained. “We couldn’t even say the word ‘body,’ otherwise they would kill you.”

A doctor accompanied these rounds, with the most notorious known only as “The Butcher.” His gruff voice echoing through the prison struck fear into the inmates. If any prisoner requested medical assistance, The Butcher typically dragged them from their cell and beat them unconscious. He threatened to kill anyone who dared look him in the face.

Food was severely restricted—a single bowl of yogurt might be shared among 20 people, occasionally supplemented with small portions of bread, cheese, or eggs. Guards deliberately tormented prisoners during meal distribution, stepping on their food or spilling it onto their blankets.

“I can’t even describe the meals they’d bring us,” Mouma said. “Not even a dog would be willing to eat this.” With each passing month, he grew increasingly gaunt, his skin becoming pale and fragile over protruding bones. His daily prayers focused on survival—just one more day without a beating.

Systematic Execution and the Crushing of Hope

Even those who managed to survive the brutal conditions faced execution after perfunctory trials that mocked any concept of justice. Every two weeks, guards would bang on the iron gates of each wing and read aloud the names of those selected for execution, according to eight former prisoners interviewed by The Times.

Some desperately ran to hide in cell bathrooms upon hearing their names called. Others stepped forward, resigned to their fate. Early in the civil war, condemned prisoners were taken from the main building to a small room in the basement of another structure approximately 500 feet away. There they were hanged in the presence of several officials, including the prison director, according to the prison officials who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity.

The only contact with the outside world came through brief family visits permitted every few months. In the visitation hall, prisoners and visitors were kept several feet apart, separated by floor-to-ceiling bars, with a corridor patrolled by guards between them.

These visits sometimes brought unexpected anguish. Al-Uthman recalled how a cellmate’s first visit with his wife and newborn daughter since his arrest proved emotionally overwhelming. In the weeks that followed, the cellmate stopped eating and drinking, retreating to a corner of their cell where he spoke only to hallucinations of his wife until his eventual death.

Yet for others, these visits offered rare moments of hope. Mohammad al-Abdallah, arrested in 2020 after joining the rebel movement, had been imprisoned for nearly two years when he heard guards call a familiar name during visitation—Akram al-Abdallah, his younger brother.

The brothers had abandoned their dreams of becoming doctors to join the rebellion in their Homs neighborhood. When Mohammad saw Akram—emaciated and exhausted beyond recognition—he could identify his brother only by his voice. “It was like I had died, and suddenly my soul came back to me,” Mohammad said. Until that moment, he had no idea Akram was also imprisoned in Sednaya.

Later, the brothers learned their youngest sibling, Khalid, had also been held there for years before dying in captivity. Approximately six months before the regime fell, Akram was transferred to the cell adjacent to Mohammad’s after falling ill. Each night, they would comfort each other by talking through small openings between their cells.

Freedom From the Unimaginable

Most prisoners could not conceive of ever leaving Sednaya alive. Then, on December 8, 2024, the unthinkable happened. In the middle of the night, prisoners heard unusual commotion and shouting from the prison staff, followed by the distinctive sound of a helicopter landing on the roof. Gunshots echoed through the facility, accompanied by the rattling of iron bars and triumphant cries of “Allahu akbar”—”God is great.”

With limited access to outside information, most prisoners were unaware of the rebels’ rapid advance. Confusion and terror filled the cells. Al-Diq, captured at a checkpoint in 2019, thought a prisoner riot had erupted and lay flat on the ground, too frightened to move.

Al-Buraidi and his cellmates took refuge in their cell’s bathroom as men forced open their wing’s door with rifle butts. When they shot open his cell door, the liberators shouted: “Go, go wherever you want in Syria. You are free now!”

When Mohammad and Akram emerged from their cells, they embraced, with the weakened Akram collapsing in his brother’s arms. Al-Uthman began running down the road away from the prison, convinced for miles that his freedom was an illusion and guards would appear to return him to Sednaya.

Mouma stumbled out of the prison complex in disbelief. “We couldn’t believe it, and we had no idea what to do,” he recalled. “It was ecstasy beyond description.”

As Syria begins the painful process of reconciliation after years of devastating conflict, the survivors of Sednaya stand as living testimonies to the darkest chapter of the Assad regime—a system of institutionalized cruelty designed to crush dissent through the most extreme methods of human suffering. Their stories, now finally emerging, reveal the true extent of the horrors that occurred behind Sednaya’s walls and underscore the importance of accountability and justice in Syria’s future.