December 8, 2024, was a day most Syrians thought they would never live to see. Bashar al-Assad, the dictator who had ruled for more than 24 years—following his father Hafez’s almost 30—suddenly fled the country and escaped to Russia after Syrian rebels entered the capital, Damascus.
Bashar al-Assad presided over a violent and repressive regime that waged a 14-year war against its population, a conflict in which more than six hundred thousand Syrians are estimated to have been killed. His regime imprisoned more than 150,000 people, including some 5,000 children. Multiple reports have emerged of horrific torture, neglect, and murder inside the prisons, and of forced disappearance on a mass scale. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that as many as 100,000 people may have died in government-run prisons, including the infamous Saydnaya Prison, known as a “human slaughterhouse.” In fact, it is impossible to know the actual number.
Immediately after the regime fell, one of the opposition’s first acts was to free the inmates held at such notorious facilities. Most detainees were imprisoned for being perceived as critics or opponents of the regime—or sometimes simply for living in opposition-held areas. One of the freed prisoners told the BBC, “When they came to start liberating us and shouting ‘all go out, all go out,’ I ran out of the prison but I was so terrified to look behind me because I thought they’d put me back…It was the best day of my life. An unexplainable feeling. Like someone who had just escaped death.”
Videos of clearly shocked and traumatized prisoners fleeing their dank, dark quarters—some seeing sunlight for the first time in years—and reuniting with their families spread quickly across social media. While many questions remain about Syria’s future, the jubilation across the country during these scenes of liberation, reunion, and hope was palpable.
These scenes recalled not only the horrors of the civil war but also what political prisoners in Syria experienced for decades before that under Baath Party rule. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of prisoners have languished in horrific conditions, many of whom have committed no crime other than writing, speaking, or peacefully protesting against a regime capable of inhumane acts of cruelty on a mass scale.
Imprisonment in Syria in the Twentieth Century
While the rule of Bashar al-Assad brought seemingly endless brutality, especially after the start of the civil war in 2011, human rights groups long criticized Syria for its harsh policies of detainment and treatment of its prisoners. Since the Baath Party seized power in 1963, the Syrian government used a state of emergency justification to imprison government critics, many after unfair trials—or after no trial at all. Even more shocking repression occurred under the presidency of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, who ruled Syria almost 30 years before his son assumed the role in 2000.
Hafez al-Assad and his regime took full advantage of the state of emergency designation, arresting government critics and those who belonged to other political parties, including Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood and leftist groups such as the Party for Communist Action. So-called offenses were purposely defined and implemented in vague and arbitrary wars, including crimes like “membership in a secret organization created to change the economic or social structure of the state.” Arrests targeted individuals from all sectors, including laborers, engineers, teachers, and physicians. In 1982, the regime laid siege to the city of Hama—after members of the Muslim Brotherhood killed military officers and security personnel—and attacked it with artillery and war planes, killing anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 of its residents and arresting thousands more.
As early as the 1980s, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International were raising questions to Syria’s president about the location and condition of prisoners, especially those charged with political crimes.
As early as the 1980s, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International were raising questions to Syria’s president about the location and condition of prisoners, especially those charged with political crimes. Many of the imprisoned already had health ailments, and the horrific living conditions and medical care in Syria’s prisons only increased their suffering. Amnesty criticized Syria’s arbitrary arrests of political opponents and issued follow-up reports with detailed lists of those believed to be detained. Multiple calls for information to the Syrian government on the status of prisoners over many years went unanswered.
Human rights groups had good reason to be alarmed. Many people were killed or died in detention facilities, but those who survived later recounted traumatic prison experiences beyond human comprehension. Saydnaya was already well known as a particularly dangerous facility, along with Tadmur prison in the desert near Palmyra, described as one of the worst prisons in the world. There, prisoners were completely isolated and experienced daily physical and mental abuse and neglect, leaving many to die in their cells of hunger or disease.
Prisoners in Tadmur were kept in tiny, windowless, concrete cells, with no lighting or bedding. Some have told of being forbidden from making eye contact, beaten by guards immediately upon arrival in what was sickeningly called a “reception party,” and forced to witness or commit traumatic acts, including harming other prisoners, or potentially being killed for refusal. The regime held an estimated 20,000 prisoners in Tadmur between 1980-1990. Some prisoners were sent there for merely refusing to sign loyalty oaths to the Syrian president. Tadmur was also the site of an infamous prisoner massacre in 1980, when soldiers led by Hafez al-Assad’s brother killed up to 1,000 detainees, most allegedly connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, after an assassination attempt on the president. The so-called Islamic State destroyed the facility in 2015, a move not welcomed by some opposition leaders and former prisoners. As Syrian opposition activist and Arab Center Senior Fellow Radwan Ziadeh said, the prison “should have been kept as a museum for future generations as evidence of degradation of human beings during the Assad rule.”
Hafez al-Assad occasionally released a few political prisoners; for example, in November 1995, he freed some 1,200 such prisoners in an act of presidential amnesty. Some had been imprisoned with no trial or even charges since the early 1970s. There were also smaller releases around that period, but no reform to the policies and practices that locked up such large numbers of people without even a pretext of legal basis. In a 1998 interview, when it was well known that hundreds of political prisoners remained in detention, Hafez al-Assad told a French reporter, “I do not go into the prisons, but I believe that there are not many prisoners anymore.”
Transition to a New al-Assad Autocracy
Al-Assad, who had survived at least one assassination attempt and health challenges to remain a key actor in the Arab region for decades, died in June 2000 of a heart attack. Assad had initially prepared his oldest son Basil to take his place, but after Basil died in a car accident in 1994, he chose his second son, Bashar, instead. In his first two years in office, Bashar shut down the Mezzeh prison, released hundreds of political prisoners detained during his father’s regime, and encouraged discussions on democratic reform. Yet he would soon carry on the most brutal aspects of his father’s legacy—and even surpass them.
In his first two years in office, Bashar shut down the Mezzeh prison, released hundreds of political prisoners detained during his father’s regime, and encouraged discussions on democratic reform. Yet he would soon carry on the most brutal aspects of his father’s legacy—and even surpass them.
Within two years, he began to imprison critics and abandon his initial calls for social reform. Regional events over the next decade led to further instability in Syria—and to increased arrests of critics and opposition members. While clamping down on domestic dissent and arresting journalists and activists, Bashar was making efforts to open the country’s economy. As a 2010 Human Rights Watch report summarized, “While visitors to Damascus are likely to stay in smart boutique hotels and dine in shiny new restaurants, ordinary Syrians continue to risk jail merely for criticizing their president, starting a blog, or protesting government policies.”
The worst period of repression was soon to come, with Assad’s brutality during the 2011-2024 civil war making the conflict one of the worst of the twenty-first century. In the early period of the uprising that began in March 2011, after his military had already killed hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, Assad made a few small concessions, including freeing political prisoners and lifting the state of emergency. But by the summer of 2011, government repression and violence increased, with government forces attacking opposition rallies, raiding universities, and laying siege to villages. As protests spread, so did the regime’s killings and arrests. Human rights groups raised the alarm about the Syrian government’s crimes against humanity, but few people could have predicted what was to come.
What followed was more than a decade of horrific war that included the regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians and the dropping of thousands of barrel bombs that destroyed homes, schools, and hospitals. The regime employed as war tactics widescale rape and sexual violence and a system of detention, torture, and forced disappearance that targeted men, women, and children for any perceived crime.
In 2014, a Syrian defector, a former military police photographer, smuggled out of the country tens of thousands of images of detainees, including photos of thousands of those whom the regime had executed. The images showed unambiguous evidence of abuse, as the prisoners’ bodies were emaciated, beaten, and tortured, and in some cases even missing eyes. The documentation also showed that the regime was keenly aware of the conditions in the prisons and, indeed, was taking a systematic approach to the executions and other deaths in custody, including by numbering and photographing prisoners’ bodies. Regime doctors who filled out death certificates often put innocuous, false causes of death such as “breathing problems.”
By 2015, the regime had forcibly disappeared almost 60,000 civilians and kidnapped some people from their homes, cars, and markets. Often, their families had no idea where they were or if they were still alive; some families would not openly discuss their missing loved ones, fearing that doing so would bring them more harm. Some paid bribes to regime officials for information on their disappeared relatives.
By 2015, the regime had forcibly disappeared almost 60,000 civilians and kidnapped some people from their homes, cars, and markets. Often, their families had no idea where they were or if they were still alive.
By the time Assad fled Syria in December 2024, the regime had arrested or forcibly disappeared am estimated 157,000 people, including approximately 10,000 women and 5,000 children. Prisoners were reportedly held across more than 100 facilities. Among the first acts of the opposition forces was to breach the regime’s prisons and free tens of thousands of prisoners trapped inside—some for decades. Many of the prisoners were in disbelief, assuming the prison break was a trap, while others were in a state of pure shock, unable to even tell rescuers their name.
Their stories once liberated told of a regime with an unending ability to torment and harm, with tiny living quarters shared with dozens of others, sometimes each prisoner having only one floor tile on which to squat. Some men were tortured while their fathers, brothers, and sons were forced to watch. Women were not spared; they too were beaten, isolated, and tortured. In one video of female prisoners being released, a small child appeared to be held with them. The death of a cellmate due to suffocation, infected wounds, or any other number of ailments was commonplace. One former prisoner held in Branch 215, an underground facility in Damascus, told the Associated Press, “Death was the least bad thing. We reached a place where death was easier than staying here for one minute.”
Unfortunately, amid the joy experienced by so many who were finally free and reunited with loved ones, the releases also represented a cold reality for many who were hoping that their missing friend or relative was still alive in prison. Immediately upon the regime’s fall, tens of thousands of Syrians rushed to Saydnaya to search for their parents, siblings, children, and friends. While many were found and freed, many more were missing. First responders brought search dogs to assist in finding anyone left alive, and equipment was brought in to knock down walls and search underground for hidden cells. Families combed through cells looking for any evidence that their loved ones had been held there and questioned who had been freed if they had ever crossed paths with their relatives while inside.
What Will Syria’s Next Era Bring?
For those suddenly liberated, the physical torture has ended, but the psychological trauma has not. As a newly released female prisoner described, “I am destroyed psychologically…Something is missing. It is hard to keep going.” Some freed prisoners returned to their former cells in the following weeks, as if to prove to themselves that their nightmare was truly over. “I came here today only to see that truly nothing lasts forever,” one told Reuters.
The path to accountability will be a long one. Multiple organizations have been compiling evidence of conditions in prisons for years, but the work will require such painstaking effort that significant coordination is needed.
The path to accountability will be a long one. Multiple organizations have been compiling evidence of conditions in prisons for years, but the work will require such painstaking effort that significant coordination is needed. The UN International Impartial and Independent Mechanism has offered to support the efforts of the new Syrian administration to begin vital investigations. Another UN mechanism, the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic, has been created to help find and identify the thousands who remain missing. And the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture submitted a report on the treatment of prisoners in regime prisons ahead of hearings in the International Court of Justice’s case against the Syrian Arab Republic.
What comes next for Syria is still unclear. Today, tens of thousands of human beings, held in conditions that will undoubtedly be considered among the worst in history, are free. But for so many families, the nightmare is not over, as the status of thousands of missing Syrians remains unknown. Despite their happiness at the downfall of the regime that destroyed their families, their lives remain incomplete, as conveyed by Bassam Masri, whose son was detained in 2011. As Masri searched for him at Saydnaya, he lamented, “This happiness will not be completed until I can see my son out of prison and know where he is.”
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Mohammad Bash
