The horrors of Syria – That’s how brutal it was in Assad’s ‘slaughterhouse’.

The White Helmets of Syria’s Civil Defense believe that up to 150,000 people may have been held in the Saidnaya military prison. Every day, 50 to 100 prisoners were executed and then burned in ovens (see video above).

The methods used by military and security officers are brutal. The lawyer David Crane, who viewed images of torture, spoke of ‘murders on an industrial scale’. Human rights group Amnesty International said there was a room with 30 nooses for hanging prisoners. The US government spoke of a crematorium next to the main building to burn bodies. Several more were discovered there during the liberation, says Raid al-Saleh, leader of the White Helmets.

Raped and disappeared
In just one day, some 20,000 to 50,000 people were rescued from the building complex north of the capital Damascus. The guards fled the facility after the Syrian ruler was overthrown. Survivors and former guards told Amnesty International about a human press known as a ‘magic carpet’ and the ‘hoop method’. Prisoners were forced into a tire with their heads between their knees and beaten. Prisoners were killed with the metal press.

The military prison is known among Syrians as the ‘slaughterhouse’. Prisoners were raped and beaten, others went into psychosis and died in their cells. People didn’t have to commit a crime to be locked up. It was enough to be against the system. Since the 1970s, Syria has had prisons in which opposition members disappeared like black holes.

Pilot didn’t want to bomb the city – prison sentence
Among those released is a former pilot who refused to bomb the city of Hama during an uprising against Hafiz al-Assad (Assad’s father, note) in the 1980s. After 43 years in prison, he finds a completely different Syria. The survivors are now trying to find a basis in their new lives. They are often seriously scarred by the injuries they have sustained.

Here you can see a video of the prisoner search.

Many prisoners remain missing. Civil protection officials and family members are therefore still looking for supposedly hidden underground cells. The Assad government had described the accusations of detaining and even killing dissidents as “baseless” and false.

Some people now hold symbolic funerals and memorial services for their loved ones. With the liberation of the Saidnaya military prison, new details about the conditions have come to light.