Inside Sednaya Prison: Assad’s Human Slaughterhouse

Inside Sednaya Prison: Assad’s Human Slaughterhouse

For years, just outside of
Damascus, Syria, Sednaya Prison was one of the Assad
regime’s darkest secrets. A place so brutal, it
became known as the Human Slaughterhouse. Hidden from the world,
it was a site of torture, mass executions, and
forced disappearances. Thousands were sent here, but
few ever made it out alive. But that all changed on
December 8th, 2024, when Assad’s fall from power
finally exposed the horrors hidden behind
these walls to the world. Today, I’m going inside
Sednaya to see what remains of Syria’s most notorious prison. So, guys, we are entering
right now the grounds of the infamous Sednaya Prison. This is arguably the most
terrible, most infamous prison of the Assad regime. It’s currently, like, almost
everywhere in Syria under the control of Hayat Tahrir
al-Sham, or HTS, the group that overthrew Assad. And they very kindly let
us in to take a look. We’re gonna try our best
to get inside and show you guys as much as we
can of what went on here. And Muhammed, so this was
the main prison, yeah? This is the main prison. So as we are entering
the prison, we’ll see the huge building. Mostly the prison has three
big sections, so three floors. Also, you can see it from
here, three floors, and we have one floor under
the ground that has some many private cells. And that was kind of for
the deepest, darkest… Yeah. When HTS entered and they
released the, let’s say, the prisoners, they heard
that there are some voices downstairs, like under
the ground, but they couldn’t reach them. So they tried to contact with
people who can help them, and I guess the main one
was the White Helmet. So they came here, they
started to dig in the ground to see, they
want go inside and to release these prisoners. Yeah, you saw video on the
news of people, like, trying to break through all these
crazy locks and doors and… Congratulations! Come out! I get the sense that that
downstairs level is where they kind of put their
forever prisoners. Exactly, yeah, exactly. The guys who were
never coming out… So they used to, yeah,
to put them there and just to keep them for
a long period of time. So now we are going
to enter the main entrance of the prison. You will see many posters
about missing people. So their families came to this
prison, they know that their members of the family, they
are now in prison inside, but they are not sure if they are
passed away, so we don’t know. So they put these posters, so
if anyone saw them, they will tell them, and they added
a phone number so that they can call them. You can see also here how
the White Helmets started to dig to see if there
is a way to go and reach the downstairs prison. Yeah, you can see they’re
cutting through all this rebar and everything, so it’s
pretty heavily reinforced. Is this Hafez? Yeah. The father of Bashar al-Assad. Put that back
where it belongs. Almost all the prisoners here
were just political prisoners. I mean, they’re just
enemies of the regime. Yeah, yeah. They’re not really criminals. Exactly. So that’s why this prison was
important when the HTS came, because the prisoners here,
they weren’t criminals. So because of their
point of view, or their political point, they
were in prison here. Wow. When we came here like a
couple of days ago, there was a horrible smell inside. So I guess from maybe
rats when they were dead? A little over a month
ago, this was not all destroyed like this. This was a normal
functioning prison. Yeah, yeah, of course. The thing we are seeing now,
all the stones, because they tried to go deeper to see
the prisoners out of there. Yeah, you can see the
different places they tried. There’s a hole. There’s a hole. Wow. Oh my gosh. So they tried to dig in every
place over here to see if there is a way so they can go
deeper to see the prisoners. I guess the deepest one
is going to be that. Oh my goodness. Oh, but they still
didn’t get through. Not through here? So eventually they found
a way down to the… Yeah, at the end, yeah. So you’ve got all of
these skinny cages around the edges of this room. So you think maybe this was
the room they entered first? They entered first, they put
them here inside, like in a queue, and they… Maybe
they put them in the… the cell that they…
they wanted them to go. Uh-huh. So they’re digging there also? They tried to like,
find a place they can go under the ground. And check this out. All this uh, ribbon
here is Turkish. Arama Kurtarma. Search and Rescue. From AFAD. It’s no secret that Turkey
more or less gave the green light to kind of move on
overthrowing the regime, and so I guess that’s a big
question now, is how closely is Turkey really working with
everything, and how involved is Turkey in everything
that’s going on here in Syria? But you can see little
signs of Turkey like that. Here’s the walls of the
prison, barbed wire. So now we are in the main, or
the first floor of the prison. You will see many
cells all around. So these cells are not only
private, so they put as many people as they can inside. And I’m sure the conditions
here were terrible… Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Take a look at this,
there’s a bed in here. Just metal bed frames…
Windows of the cell… It’s like personal
items and things. Yeah. Yeah, standing cell, yeah. Wow. Oh my god. So there’s this giant
concourse in the middle, several floors tall. So you think maybe this
is the way the guards came down or something, and
they would enter the block? Yeah, and if they want to go
and reach the other floors, they can go higher, I guess. Oh my gosh. Are they letting the
public in here now? Like if just, you know,
some random Syrian people showed up? Now, no. No. They don’t let anyone enter. Of course, journalists, if
have permission from the Ministry of Information,
they can enter this place. Okay. Now they are doing something. The new Syrian government
is going to turn this prison into a museum. Really? Yeah. So it will be open for
everyone to come here and to see what happened during
the time of Assad regime. So it’ll be just generally
a museum about kind of the crimes of Assad. Alright, and we’re on
the upper level now. There’s just this little
ledge, and then a straight drop down to the bottom. Wow. Alright, so back down
on the bottom floor. Oh my gosh. And here’s a cell block. Some more cells… So, I mean, the ones
over there were just bars on the side, but these
are deeper, darker. These are for, yeah, for many
people, not just only like two or three, you can go inside
and see how big is this cell. Wow. And it’s no windows,
even the outer wall is almost entirely covered. There’s just a
little section there. Yeah. For this kind of prison,
you can see there is bathroom inside. Here’s a small bathroom. Wow. It’s like everything
is almost untouched. You’ve still got the
plastic bins here. You can see some rags and
things for showering, some towels, and then just a
very, very, very basic shower room with just a spigot… down there. I don’t even see
anything up at the top. Here’s the toilet, clogged. Not nice… at all. Brutal. Here’s a little sink. You can see it’s, it’s
totally falling off the wall, literally held up
by some threads hanging from this plastic pipe. Just terrible,
terrible conditions. Oh my god. And there’s the towels of the
prisoners still hanging there. There’s bars of soap
stuck to the wall. Paint peeling off the ceiling. That’s crazy. So yeah, imagine, like, they
lived here for many years and now the bathroom is
going to be next to them and without any door to
just to keep the smell. Yeah, it must have been awful. Awful, the smell. And if the bathroom is
not that clean, it will bring some disease. It’s like hell on earth. They used to bring food
for them using these. They put the food inside Oh my gosh. So they would
just give them a bucket? Yeah, just give them the
bucket, this is the food. Like, maybe three, four, five
of these for, we are talking about maybe 50 prisoners here. There’s literally still food
inside, rotting food. You can see something there,
something there… And this bread or something
totally covered in mold now. Some sugar… a
pile of onions. Were there beds in here,
you think, or they’re just on the floor? No, I don’t think so. No. Just used the towels
or these things to cover, and that’s it. That’s crazy. You can see pants,
shirts, blankets… So we just came out of there,
you can see, that was just one of them, and look how
many there are down this hall. And this is only part of one
section, so we have maybe hundreds of sections. Right, this is one
section on one floor. This is only one floor, one
section, one floor, yeah. And there’s like four or five
floors total, not to mention even the basement one, which
is apparently even worse. Yeah, the basement is
different from these cells. Do they know how many people
they freed out of here, total? Uh, because they opened
the cells to everyone, so they came outside, so… But we are talking,
maybe we’re talking about thousands of people used
to be in prison here. uh-huh. Even just the door here. Just this tiny little
latch that you could open. And in here, same thing. This one has even
more stuff inside it. Oh my gosh, you can only
imagine how many people were staying in here. So many clothes. This is just crazy. It looks like the people
really just dropped everything and ran out of here. Yeah, they just
wanted to go outside. Like, they couldn’t imagine,
like, this is happening now. I read and saw on the
news that people, like… Thank God for your safety! You know, they had no idea
what year it was, some people, they didn’t know how long
they’d been in here… Yeah, yeah, they don’t know.
They don’t know anything. Go out, sir, go out! Thank
God for your safety! Go out! You’re free! Go out! They don’t know what year,
they don’t know what’s happening outside. Because, you know, when the
HTS entered, there was no fighting, so they didn’t
hear anything from outside attacking with the previous
Syrian regime army. So they heard some people
entering this place, opening the cells, and
you are free to go. Jeez. Oh my god, it gives me chills. I can’t imagine. Go out, go out! It’s
over, Bashar has fallen! My gosh. And in this prison,
was it just men? Were there women? Children? Of course there’s some
sections for women. I saw a video… They found, like, a
little child or small kid. He’s like five, six… but how? Because of the
guards of the prison. Really? So she got pregnant here in
this prison, and had this kid. And imagine, this kid
didn’t know anything. What is outside, what is sun,
and what is tree? And just like spending his five years
or six years in this prison. So they gave them time, some
people, it depends on the section of the prison,
they gave them time to have a shower. Maybe you
got two, three minutes? And “shower” is a pretty
generous term, because here you’ve got just two giant
pipes connecting all of these shower stalls here, and
they just open up out of a pipe and into these little
stalls, side by side. Alright, we’re going down now. We’re still above ground. Thick layer of blankets
and clothes here. Storage, maybe, who knows? Lot of blankets… Ah, in here too. So guys, this must
have been a guard room. You can see, you know, the
uniforms and the camo gear. Maybe this was storage for
guards’ uniforms or something, something like that,
here in this room. So it’s a guard
room, I guess, yeah. The guard room has like,
some cells, but these cells are temporary, not always. So they stay here, after that,
they take them to the right place, or the thing that,
what they did, it depends, maybe on the first floor
or the ground floor. Right, right. So these are kind of
temporary holding cells. You can see a toilet here. That’s it. And then… just a very bare
cell, totally in the dark. You can see, I don’t know
if those were opening to anything, but everything
has been blacked out. It’s just total darkness
in here if we take away the flashlights. Look at that. And you’ve got this kind
of driveway that goes right through here, and then
straight to the holding cells. Who knows for sure, but
maybe that’s how they did it. There’s a hole in the wall
here, into this, what feels like a factory assembly line. And this was, you
said, like a bakery? Like a bakery, yeah. So part of the- Bread for prisoners, yeah. Bread for the prisoners… Oh my gosh. So you’ve got a whole
conveyor belt here. And different machinery. Is that… flour? I think it is. Yeah, yeah it is. It is flour. I just smelled it
when we stepped in it. That’s how fresh
everything is here. I mean, freshly uncovered. Nothing else about it is
fresh, the conditions. But this place was, you know,
making bread a little over a month ago for maybe
thousands of prisoners. You can see here, even
on the conveyor belt… Flour. Unbelievable. I remember seeing this on CNN,
this stairwell… breaking through down here. Now we’re going down to the
deepest level of the prison, the darkest place, the
place reserved for the least desirable prisoners, the
people who probably were never meant to get out of here. While they dig, they found a
small prison in the basement. So, they are totally
private prisons for one person, or maybe two. Oh my gosh. Tiny, tiny cell. Look at that, just
from wall to wall. That’s it. I would
say, like, less than 2 meters by 2 meters. Yeah, less than
2 meters, yeah. Oh my goodness. And here, same thing. Just filthy toilet. What even is that stuff? Oh my god. It looks like black cobwebs, I
think it’s spiderwebs covered in smoke or something. I’ve never seen anything
like that before. That is so creepy. This is like so
disturbing, so awful. Oh my god. How did they used to breathe? There’s no way for
the air to enter… I don’t know how anyone
could could live like this. From these holes? The
air would go inside… Oh my god. Just the little
holes. My goodness… I just can’t believe
anyone could survive this. No. They did, I guess, somehow. So that’s a miracle. My god. And you can see just cells
along every wall down here, and there’s several different
corridors over there. Same situation in all of them. Alright, climbing back out. As a foreigner, like someone
who’s never been to Syria, we always knew that Assad
was, you know, a bad, evil dictator, but seeing,
like, the specific things in person is just… Details or things like that… It just puts it in a whole
different perspective. It’s another level. You can’t really imagine
just how bad it was. Alright, we’ve come back
outside, and you can find bullet casings around, on the
ground, all over the place. Like AK-47. When they came here, they
started to shoot, celebrate about the fall of the regime. The landscape surrounding
it is totally beautiful, and it’s a beautiful day today,
so it just makes it even more jarring, the horror inside
there, contrasted with the beautiful surroundings. Alright, we’re
headed out of here. Thank you very
much. Thank you. Goodbye. So here are the guys who
are guarding the prison. Thank you. Never forget, and we’re
not going to forgive. So there you have it,
the gates close again. You kind of get the sense that
the guards there are kind of uncertain about, you know,
what to say, what not to say, what to allow, what not to
allow, because everything is still being worked out here. So they were very nice and let
me take a picture with them and film them there at the
end, but we’re just, you know, being cautious and asking for
permission with every kind of step we take, everything
we try to do here. Anyway, guys, hope you
enjoyed this video, if you could enjoy it. At least, I hope you found it
interesting and enlightening. We are continuing our journey,
and I have more coming from Syria very soon. But other than that, thank
you for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye-bye. On December 8th, 2024 and
in the days that followed, an estimated 3,000 – 4,000
prisoners were freed from Sednaya Prison by rebel forces. The Assad regime imprisoned
tens of thousands of political dissidents in Sednaya
over the years. Most never made it out. A UN investigation found that
the Assad regime deliberately exterminated detainees at
Sednaya after torturing and housing them in appalling
conditions – acts that constitute crimes
against humanity. It’s estimated that over
30,000 prisoners have been killed in Sednaya since 2011. In most cases, the families of
prisoners were never informed of their loved ones’ fate.

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In this video, I’m taking you inside Syria’s infamous Sednaya Prison on the outskirts of Damascus. Also known as the Human Slaughterhouse, Sednaya Prison was the Assad regime’s most notorious prison. Tens of thousands of political dissidents were imprisoned here, and most never made it out alive. We’ll go inside Sednaya and see what remains of the prison after its liberation in December 2024 by the rebel forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

I visited Syria with the help of my guides from Syrian Guides! Check them out here: https://www.syrianguides.com

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