In 2017, Yahoo News interviewed the fallen Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in an exclusive interview. The interviewer, Michael Isikoff, an investigative American journalist, asked al-Assad about the brutal torture in prisons reported by international agencies, the photos coming from Saydnaya military prison, and the mass executions. Al-Assad dismissed these accusations, calling them "fake news."
However, the collapse of his regime has brought forth undeniable proof that exposes the extent of his disinformation about Saydnaya Prison. Firsthand testimonies, newly taken photos, and recent horrifying statements from officials reveal a systematic machinery of death, debunking al-Assad’s previous allegations.
Recent Freed Detainees Prove the Brutal Abuse
Michael Isikoff asked Bashar al-Assad in the interview about a report titled “Human Slaughterhouse” published by Amnesty International in 2017. The report detailed atrocities committed at Saydnaya prison, based on testimonies from survivors, former guards, and experts. The report's findings were troubling, as it revealed that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Saydnaya from 2011 to 2015.
Even though the report was based on interviews with four former prison officials and guards, three former Syrian judges, and three doctors at the prisons, al-Assad said that the report “means nothing,” and accused Amnesty of being “biased and politicized.” He further stressed that Amnesty did not provide any single concrete evidence.
Despite al-Assad’s dismissal of Amnesty International's report as baseless, recent testimonies from freed detainees corroborated the reported abuse of human rights.
One of the recently discovered brutal methods is the Iron Press machine. This torture device is a large hydraulic press that was described as a mechanism designed to crush prisoners to death.
Sky News journalist Yalda Hakim revealed footage of the machine, stating that the prisoners were put into the machine and crushed to death. Sometimes, the machine would be used to crush dead bodies to dispose of them, she continued.
A Syrian journalist, Qusay Noor, reported that the Iron press machine has blood channels under it so that the blood of the crushed bodies would be disposed of on the spot. Then, the remains would be put in a bag and disposed of outside the prison, according to Noor.
New Firsthand Accounts Support the Photos al-Assad Dismissed
In the Yahoo News interview, al-Assad said: "You can forge anything these days," when confronted with photos showing torture. The interviewer asked him about the estimated 50,000 photographs documenting systematic torture, starvation, and beatings in al-Assad’s prisons, which are widely known as the Caesar photos, but he replied with a question asking who verified that the photos were not edited.
Although the photos were not published publicly, some were provided in reports examining the war crimes. Misbar’s investigation drew on photos from a 2015 report by a team of internationally renowned war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts who found “direct evidence” of “systematic torture and killing” in al-Assad prisons upon examining the photos.
Misbar’s team matched the condition of the prisoners shown in the selected Caesar photos to the recent descriptions of the prisons provided by recently freed detainees, finding that the new testimonies align with the photos.
In a recent report by BBC, titled, “'I felt like a breathing corpse': Stories from people freed from Syria torture prison,” the news outlet interviewed four men who were imprisoned in Saydnaya prison and other military prisons.
Qasem Sobhi Al-Qabalani, one of the freed prisoners from Saydnaya the BBC interviewed, stated that they were deprived of food and water for several days, which aligns with the photos of emaciated remains in Caesar photos and aligns with the overall conclusion of the report, that a significant number of the deceased were emaciated.
Three former detainees told the BBC they were tortured with vehicle tires. They said that they were sometimes forced to sit with their knees towards their foreheads and a vehicle tire placed over their bodies with a stick wedged inside before beatings were administered.
This method explains the tramline bruises on the bodies of the prisoners in Caesar's photos, which were produced by blows with rod-like objects.
The released prisoners provided horrific testimonies of torture that do not match the currently available Caesar photos but align with forensic experts' descriptions in the 2015 report.
BBC stated that all interviewees described being beaten with electric sticks. This aligns with the findings of the 2015 report that a large number of young people in the photographic images had evidence of injury by electrocution on some of the bodies.
The man who guided BBC in the Saydnaya prison said that his fingers were chopped off at the prison as torture. Another one of the interviewees, named Rakan Mohammed Al Saed, said that his teeth were knocked out when he was hit in the mouth by a guard with a stick. The report did not describe such torture method but it did say that some of the examined bodies had no eyes.
Qasem Sobhi Al-Qabalani also described torture methods that were meant to make the prisoners feel like they were on the verge of death. He said that he was held upside down by two prison officers in a barrel of water until he thought he was going to “choke and die.”
Two of the prisoners released recently described to BBC witnessing sexual assaults by guards, who they said would anally rape inmates with sticks.
It bears mentioning that this matching does not serve as verification of the photos, as organizations like Human Rights Watch and forensic experts have already verified Caesar’s photos. Additionally, institutions like the U.N. and international NGOs have acknowledged Caesar's photos as valid documentation of human rights abuses. By this matching, Misbar’s team aims to demonstrate al-Assad’s falsehoods during his interview, despite the overwhelming evidence.
It is also important to note that these accounts and records have only been documented recently. What was done inside the prisons was treated with high security in the previous years. More information about the horrors of al-Assad’s prisons will certainly emerge in the coming months, further debunking his lies or introducing new details debunking new undiscovered allegations.
Contrary to al-Assad's Claims, Mass Executions Were Not Held Legally
When asked about the mass executions held in his prisons, al-Assad replied that execution is a lawful punishment authorized by the government. “If the Syrian government or institution wants to do it, they can make it legally because it’s been therefore indicated,” al-Assad replied. He did not explain how the execution orders are decided and what are the crimes that make somebody deserve it.
According to a paper published by Syrians for Truth and Justice in October 2024, the death penalty in Syria is based on several legal texts mainly embodied in the Syrian Penal Code No. 148 issued in 1949, which stipulates the death penalty for some “crimes against the State’s security” that are vaguely worded and open to more than one interpretation, such as “plotting intrigues and scheming with a foreign country,” “plotting intrigues and scheming with the enemy,” “bearing arms against Syria in the ranks of the enemy,” “inciting civil war and sectarian strife,” and “espionage for the benefit of a hostile country.”
The death penalty is further imposed against anyone who commits a “terrorist act” or threatens the government with a “terrorist act.”
Accordingly, over the years of the ongoing conflict, many international organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have condemned the Syrian regime’s use of the death penalty as a tool of repression.
After the fall of the al-Assad regime, many of those freed detainees who were under sentence of death denied that they had done anything to deserve the death penalty.
BBC recently interviewed a released detainee named Hassan Abu Shwarb. Abu Shwarb, 31, served 11 years under sentence of death for terrorism. However, he denies he ever joined an armed group. Instead, he says he was detained at a government office when he was getting the documents necessary to apply for a passport so he could accept an offer to study in Canada.
Syrian officials who inspected the prisons after the fall of the regime expressed their shock at what they saw in the prisons, which included evidence of mass execution.
Many freed detainees said that they confessed to crimes they did not commit under severe torture. The famous detainee Mazen al-Hamada was one of those subjected to severe torture to confess to crimes. al-Hamada, whose remains were recently found at a Damascus hospital, said in his previous interviews that he confessed to crimes he did not commit when an officer secured a clamp around his genitals, screwing it tighter and tighter until the pain made him feel like his mind would burst.
Raed al-Saleh, the director of Syria’s Civil Defence organization, known as White Helmets, said in his interview with Al Jazeera that rescuers saw bodies in ovens, saying daily executions took place in the complex. According to al-Saleh, 50 to 100 people were executed daily.
“At Saydnaya and other similar prisons, executions daily were taking place. There were dead bodies in ovens,” al-Saleh said.
The mass graves discovered recently are also stark evidence that executions were done illegally under al-Assad regime.
In a recent report by Reuters, the news outlet reported that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a "machinery of death" under al-Assad. The number of bodies buried in the mass grave sites is estimated to be more than 100,000, according to Mouaz Moustafa, the head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
The bodies buried in these graves are believed to be extrajudicially murdered.
In 2021, a grave digger testified repeatedly as a witness about his work at the Najha and Qutayfah sites during the German trial of Syrian government officials. He told Congress in a written statement that three trailer trucks would arrive twice a week, packed with 300 to 600 bodies of victims of torture, starvation, and execution from military hospitals and intelligence branches around Damascus, which means that officers under the Assad regime were executing an average of 1,000 people per week.
These shocking numbers do not include those forcibly disappeared inside the prisons of the ousted regime. The head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights Fadel Abdul Ghani said that the vast majority of Syrian detainees and those who forcibly disappeared inside the prisons of the ousted Syrian regime were killed while in captivity.
According to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), at least 150,000 people are believed to have forcibly disappeared inside the prisons.
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