The Turkey-based Association of Detainees and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) said in a 2022 report that the prison “de facto became a death camp” after the conflict began.
Between 2011 and 2018, more than 30,000 prisoners are estimated to have been executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation.
It also quotes released prisoners who say at least 500 more detainees were executed between 2018 and 2021.
The ADMSP also described how “salt chambers” were constructed, which served as primitive morgues to store bodies before they were transported to the Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus for registration and burial in graves on military grounds. Their bodies were never handed over to the families of the detainees, the report says.
Amnesty International used the phrase “human slaughter” to describe Saidnai and argued that executions were authorized at the highest levels of the Assad government, and that the practice amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Assad’s government dismissed Amnesty’s claims as “baseless” and “devoid of truth”, insisting that all executions in Syria were carried out according to due process.
