ALBAWABA - Teams from the Anadolu Agency (AA) have located the notorious "execution room" in Sednaya Prison, which was the scene of mass executions and systematic torture carried out by the previous Assad government in Syria.
Detention facilities known for grave human rights abuses have come under international criticism since the overthrow of the 61-year-old Baath dictatorship and the current Syrian civil war. The "human slaughterhouse," Sednaya Prison, which was run by the Syrian Ministry of Defense, is one of them. Two structures make up the jail complex: the "White Building" and the "Red Building."
Amnesty International states that the White Building held military commanders and soldiers suspected of "disloyalty," while the Red Building kept civilians jailed since 2011. Many inmates were sent to Sednaya after being unfairly tried in military tribunals in the Mezze area of Damascus.
Inmates were reportedly escorted to the "execution room" in the southeast corner of the White Building at night while wearing blindfolds. Just minutes before their execution, the condemned were told they were going to be executed. An estimated fifty captives were hung every week or every two weeks between 2011 and 2015, and their remains were interred in mass graves close to Damascus.
Based on leaked designs and complaints from international human rights groups, the AA team spent four hours investigating the White Building under the direction of Yusuf Özhan, Deputy General Manager and Editor-in-Chief. The crew discovered the remains of cells transformed into a scorched barrack-like chamber after locating the execution room via a burned doorway and down a small staircase.
The crew saw platforms within that matched descriptions in earlier reports, suggesting the locations of executions. According to reports, jail guards would tug on the hanging inmates' corpses to make sure their necks cracked.
Tens of thousands of captives are said to have died in Sednaya Prison over the last 14 years, Özhan underlined, making it one of the most heinous representations of the Assad regime's crimes against humanity.
Using accounts from victims' relatives and former inmates, AA seeks to record the crimes at Sednaya in order to increase public awareness. Özhan said that the agency intends to work with other groups to bring attention to the atrocities in the jail via a thorough recording effort akin to its record of Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
