BEIRUT: Saydnaya prison north of the Syrian capital Damascus has become a symbol of the inhumane abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011.
The prison complex was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomising the atrocities committed by ousted president Bashar Assad.
When Syrian rebels entered Damascus early last month after a lightning advance that toppled the Assad government, they announced they had seized Saydnaya and freed its inmates.
Some had been incarcerated there since the 1980s.
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), the rebels liberated more than 4,000 people.
Photographs of haggard and emaciated inmates, some helped by their comrades because they were too weak to leave their cells, circulated worldwide.
Suddenly the workings of the infamous jail were revealed for all to see.
The foreign ministers of France and Germany — on a visit to meet with Syria’s new rulers — toured the facility on Friday accompanied by members of Syria’s White Helmets emergency rescue group.
The prison was built in the 1980s during the rule of Hafez Assad, father of the deposed president, and was initially meant for political prisoners including members of Islamist groups and Kurdish militants.
But down the years, Saydnaya became a symbol of pitiless state control over the Syrian people.
In 2016, a United Nations commission found that “the Syrian Government has also committed the crimes against humanity of murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and other inhuman acts,” notably at Saydnaya.
The following year, Amnesty International in a report entitled “Human Slaughterhouse” documented thousands of executions there, calling it a policy of extermination.
Shortly afterwards, the United States revealed the existence inside Saydnaya of a crematorium in which the remains of thousands of murdered prisoners were burned.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in 2022 reported that around 30,000 people had been imprisoned in Saydnaya where many were tortured, and that just 6,000 were released.
The ADMSP believes that more than 30,000 prisoners were executed or died under torture, or from the lack of medical care or food between 2011 and 2018.
The group says the former authorities in Syria had set up salt chambers — rooms lined with salt for use as makeshift morgues to make up for the lack of cold storage.
In 2022, the ADMSP published a report describing for the first time these makeshift morgues of salt.
It said the first such chamber dated back to 2013, one of the bloodiest years in the Syrian civil conflict.
Many inmates are officially considered to be missing, with their families never receiving death certificates unless they handed over exorbitant bribes.
After the fall of Damascus last month, thousands of relatives of the missing rushed to Saydnaya hoping they might find loved ones hidden away in underground cells.
But Saydnaya is now empty, and the White Helmets emergency workers have since announced the end of search operations there, with no more prisoners found.
Several foreigners also ended up in Syrian jails, including Jordanian Osama Bashir Hassan Al-Bataynah, who spent 38 years behind bars and was found “unconscious and suffering from memory loss,” the foreign ministry in Amman said last month.
According to the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan, 236 Jordanian citizens were held in Syrian prisons, most of them in Saydnaya.
Other freed foreigners included Suheil Hamawi from Lebanon who returned home after being locked up in Syria for 33 years, including inside Saydnaya.

DEIR AL-BALAH: At least 30 people, including children, were killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes overnight and into Friday morning, said hospital staff, as air sirens sounded across Israel and stalled ceasefire talks were set to resume.
Staff at the Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital said more than a dozen women and children were killed in strikes that hit various places in Central Gaza, including Nuseirat, Zawaida, Maghazi and Deir al Balah. Dozens of people were also killed across the enclave the previous day, bringing the total of people killed in the past 24 hours to 56.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the latest strikes, but says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths.
Strikes Thursday hit Hamas security officers and an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone. Among those killed early Friday, was Omar Al-Derawi, a freelance journalist. Associated Press reporters saw friends and colleagues mourning over his body at the hospital, with a press vest laid on top of his shroud.
Israelis also woke up to attacks early Friday morning. Israel said missiles were fired into the country from Yemen, which set off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and central Israel and sent people scrambling to shelters. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, though a faint explosion, likely either from the missile or from interceptors, could be heard in Jerusalem. Israel’s army said a missile was intercepted.
As the attacks were underway, efforts at ceasefire negotiations were expected to resume Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had authorized a delegation from the Mossad intelligence agency, the Shin Bet internal security agency and the military to continue negotiations in Qatar. The delegation is leaving for Qatar on Friday.
The US-led talks have repeatedly stalled during 15 months of war, which was sparked by Hamas-led militants’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack into Israel. The militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in retaliation has killed over 45,500 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up more than half the dead. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.
Israel’s military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas. The army says it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times.