reporter in Syria Antti Kuronen visited the notorious Saidnaya prison near Damascus today, Wednesday.
Rescue workers have stopped searching the prison building, but hundreds of desperate people were still there. They are looking for their loved ones in a prison called the slaughterhouse.
– People try to break down the walls of the building and find secret cells. However, finding such is highly unlikely. It seems that there are no more prisoners alive in the complex, says Kuronen.
The rebels released thousands of people from prison on Sunday. The exact number of those released is not known, but the relatives think that too few people were found in the prison.
Kuronen met people whose close relatives, such as fathers and uncles, had been imprisoned years or even decades ago.
Relatives said that people were arbitrarily imprisoned after the civil war started in 2011.
– It was generally thought that once you got to Saidnaya, you would never walk out again. That kind of atmosphere really remained in the place, says Kuronen.
Rumors of mass graves
Relatives of those imprisoned wonder where all the dead are.
It is known that Bashar al-Assad the regime of terror tortured the prisoners in Saidnaya in an extremely cruel way.
– The feeling here is unreal. Previously, everyone who was imprisoned here died, says the person who came from Homs Abdu al-Razak.
– My brother was here for 12 years, after the uprising began. This is a scary prison. This is not even a prison for people, this is a slaughterhouse, says the same person who came from Homs to see the prison Hussein Kaser.
The relatives tried to bribe the guards
According to Kuronen, the prison complex is a really barren and huge facility. It is located twenty kilometers from Damascus on top of a hill.
– There have been dozens of people in one room. There was a roll of blankets next to it. There was one small toilet hole in the floor.
– There were still tied plastic bags full of urine outside some of the cells. Apparently, the prisoners defecated in plastic bags.
Kuronen says that almost all the relatives of those who have been missing for years paid bribes to the administration in order to free their loved ones.
– One person present said that he sold his home to pay bribes, but nothing happened.
There were more than a hundred torture centers in Syria
Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) according to about 137,000 Syrians were imprisoned by the regime or missing at the time of the coup.
This chapter includes those arrested between the uprising that started in March 2011 and August of this year. According to SNHR, about 3,700 of those imprisoned were children and 8,500 were women.
Anyone who criticized the al-Assad regime could be imprisoned.
It is known to the UN more than a hundred detention centers where the al-Assad regime tortured prisoners.
The most notorious of them was the previously introduced Saidnaya.
In addition, there were an unknown number of secret detention centers in Syria. The extent of the network will become clear when the atrocities of al-Assad’s regime are investigated in more detail.
Currently, rebels and aid workers continue to search for secret prisons and dungeons.
A Syrian aid organization known as the White Helmets has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of secret detention centers.
Prisoners can still be found in secret dungeons
According to aid organizations, an unknown number of prisoners may still be lurking in secret dungeons.
A huge number of opponents of the regime disappeared during al-Assad’s reign.
The families of the missing hope to find their loved ones or at least find out what happened.
According to UN reports prisoners were tortured physically and psychologically. They were abused, raped and starved to death.
Al-Assad’s brutal regime used dozens of different torture methods. The guards whipped the prisoners, gave them electric shocks and prevented them from sleeping.
One of the most brutal forms of torture was crushing the spine.