Syria rescuers end search for secret cells in Saydnaya prison

Rescue workers from the White Helmets say they have ended their search operation for possible detainees in secret cells or basements at Syria’s notorious Saydnaya military prison without finding anyone.

Specialised teams assisted by K9 dog units and individuals familiar with the layout combed the prison and its grounds on Monday, as crowds gathered in the hope of finding their missing relatives.

“The search did not uncover any unopened or hidden areas within the facility,” a White Helmets statement said.

The news came as rebel fighters said they had found almost 40 bodies showing signs of torture in the mortuary of a hospital in the capital, Damascus.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Islamist militant group whose offensive led to the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday said former senior officials who oversaw the torture of political prisoners during the country’s 13-year civil war would be held accountable.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said the names of the officials would be published and repatriation sought for those who had fled to other countries. Rewards would also be offered to anyone who provided information about their whereabouts, he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, says almost 60,000 people were tortured and killed in the Assad government’s prisons.

Human rights groups say more than 100,000 people have disappeared since Assad ordered a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011 that triggered the civil war.

The Turkey-based Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) said in a 2022 report that the prison “effectively became a death camp” after the start of the conflict.

It estimated that more than 30,000 detainees had either been executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation at the facility between 2011 and 2018.

It also cited released inmates as saying that at least another 500 detainees had been executed between 2018 and 2021.

ADMSP also described how “salt chambers” were constructed to serve as primitive mortuaries to store bodies before they were transferred to Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus for registration and burial in graves on military land. The detainees’ families were never given their bodies, it said.

Amnesty International used the phrase “human slaughterhouse” to describe Saydnaya and alleged that the executions had been authorised at the highest levels of the Assad government, and that such practices amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Assad government dismissed Amnesty’s claims as “baseless” and “devoid of truth”, insisting that all executions in Syria followed due process.