A day after the fall of the Assad regime, there were so many people trying to find Sednaya prison that a man with a sign stood on the road directing them. Cars thronged the routes, passengers abandoning their vehicles to point at the fearsome military complex in the distance. Thousands trekked up a hill, warning each other not to walk off the beaten track: the area was laced with mines, they said.
They had come from far and wide looking for answers, drawn by hope. They wondered if the fall of the regime meant they would finally experience a miracle reunion.
Sednaya was the most notorious of Syria’s prisons. As a rebel coalition advanced across the country – culminating in the ousting of president Bashar al-Assad on Sunday – activists online began tracking how far fighters were from the prison, anticipating that they would release those locked inside.
From 2011 to 2015, between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed in Sednaya as Assad brutally tried to hold on to his rule, Amnesty International said in a 2017 report. It detailed prisoners being killed in “mass hangings”, after torture and deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care – violations Amnesty said amounted to crimes against humanity. Rebels said this week that they found 40 bodies showing signs of torture.
Red ropes were still attached to cement walls in one area this week, as hordes roamed the labyrinthine complex. Those searching for loved ones left with more detailed conceptions of the suffering they may have gone through. In one room, a hushed crowd gazed, horrified, at a green machine that appeared to be designed to crush bodies. A man lifted a rope to his face. “It smells like humans,” he said. A stretcher and prosthetic leg lay on the ground in a dark, downstairs area. In a corner of a nearby room, there was a thicket of black hair.
Syria’s prison systems existed long before the 2011 revolution evolved into brutal suppression and civil war. But the revolution prompted a wave of arrests, with UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) saying the Assad regime detained about 136,000 people between 2011 and 2024, 96,000 of whom are considered to have been “forcibly disappeared”. That figure included more than 2,300 children and more than 5,740 women.
A document obtained by a coalition of survivors and families said 4,300 detainees were held at Sednaya as recently as October 2024.
On Monday, people congregated in an area to pull documents from woven rice sacks. A young man whose friend went missing in 2012 scanned one, but it related to detentions decades ago. In the chaos, other papers were being trodden into the ground.
A lawyer approached to express a worry: crucial evidence is being destroyed, he said. It was clear what he meant. People sitting in grass closer to the prison had even lit fires to keep warm, pieces of paper burning amid them.
Though mass releases happened in Sunday’s early hours, rumours went around that there were undiscovered underground cells, prompting frantic searches – both by Syria’s White Helmets civil defence and by families themselves.
In darkness, people walked in every direction, using phone lights to search for clues. They opened manholes, dug dirt and wielded sledgehammers to break down walls.
Ibrahim Sawuan (64) wanted to find his son. In 2013, the 20-year-old was serving in the Syrian army but was detained for planning to run away.
Sawuan himself was imprisoned three years later, he said – spending four years and eight months locked up, including 80 days underground. The reason, he said, was that the regime decided he had too much money. “They confiscated all my properties. They called me a terrorist, but I’m a farmer.”
Mohammad Nawras Zewani (29) said his mother and two sisters were taken from the Zahra neighbourhood of Homs. “I don’t know anything,” he sighed.
Nadia Saadsaad’s 16-year-old son Mouiad Fawzi Harfoush was detained in August 2013, when he went to buy phone credit. With Mouiad’s stepbrother, Iyad, she stayed in Sednaya from 7am on Sunday until 8pm, and again on Monday. They were planning to return on Tuesday too. “People are saying there are 17 floors underground,” Iyad said hopefully.
[ Syrians celebrate ‘new era’ as Bashar al-Assad reportedly flees to MoscowOpens in new window ]
A man smoking outside said he had been there since the previous day searching for his uncle, who was arrested in 2016. “They said he died here. I came to the prison [before] and they gave me his ID,” he said. Yet he was unsure whether to believe it.
Another man was missing his brother, neighbour and cousin. “I visited my brother [in prison] twice and he disappeared afterwards. My cousin I heard nothing about.”
As he spoke, warplanes flew over and an Israeli air strike landed in the distance. Smoke rose, but in Sednaya the searching continued.
A woman from Daraa, known as the birthplace of Syria’s revolution, said she heard her brother was held in Sednaya’s “black cell”. She didn’t want to be named as she was still frightened “for him”: thinking he could be punished as a result.
Shortly afterwards, there was commotion as a previous inmate passed. He was held in the “white prison” for two months, he said, but he also worked in the prison kitchen. In that job, he said he saw a thick door with a hinge that led to a tunnel. He seemed confused, repeating parts of his story multiple times. It took four people to open that door, he said, and inside were prisoners behind metal wire or mesh. But he didn’t know where that door was located: that’s why he was coming back, he said.
[ Checkpoints and guard posts burned or abandoned on the road into SyriaOpens in new window ]
In a lower cell, a man was hammering at a wall. His quest seemed to epitomise the desperation hanging over this place: even when others around him said there could be nothing between the walls – there was barely any thickness between them – he kept hitting, and others kept watching, their faces still hopeful.
Despite all the hopes and rumours, in a statement in the early hours of Tuesday, the White Helmets said they had finished search operations, after finding no hidden or secret cells, and no evidence of them existing.
“We share the profound disappointment of the families of the thousands who remain missing and whose fates remain unknown,” they said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity ... fully understanding their anguish and their longing for answers.”
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here
