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.

DAMASCUS: The European Union backs a peaceful, inclusive transition in Syria, top French and German diplomats said Friday as they visited Damascus to meet with new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot and his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock were in the Syrian capital for talks on behalf of the European Union, in the highest-level visit by major Western powers since Islamist-led forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad last month.
One of their first stops was the notorious Saydnaya prison, not far from the capital, AFP journalists said.
Accompanied by White Helmet rescuers, Barrot and Baerbock toured the cells and underground dungeons of Saydnaya, the epitome of atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents.
Saydnaya was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances. An advocacy group said more than 4,000 people were freed from the detention facility when rebel forces took Damascus on Dec. 8.
Sharaa, head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), led the offensive that toppled Assad.
The HTS-dominated interim authorities now face the daunting task of rebuilding state institutions, with growing calls to ensure an inclusive transition and guarantee minority rights.
Barrot, in Damascus, expressed hope for a “sovereign, stable and peaceful” Syria.

It was also a “hope that the aspirations of all Syrians can be realized,” he added, “but it is a fragile hope.”
In a statement, Baerbock said Germany wanted to help Syria become a “safe home” for all its people, and a “functioning state, with full control over its territory.”
She said the visit was a “clear signal” to Damascus of the possibility for a new relationship between Syria and Germany, and Europe more broadly.
Earlier, in a post in X, Barrot said: “Together, France and Germany stand alongside the Syrian people, in all their diversity.”
He added that the two European powers wanted to promote a “peaceful transition.”
Despite “skepticism” about HTS — which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and is designated a terrorist organization by numerous governments Baerbock said that “we must not miss the opportunity to support the Syrian people at this important crossroads.”
Berlin was ready to support “an inclusive and peaceful transfer of power” as well as social “reconciliation,” Baerbock said.
She also asked the new regime to avoid “acts of vengeance against groups within the population,” to avoid a long delay before elections, and to avert any attempts at the “Islamization” of the judicial and education systems.
Since Assad’s ousting, a bevy of foreign envoys have traveled to Damascus to meet with the country’s new leaders.
France and Germany had both already sent lower-level delegations last month.
At the start of his visit, Barrot met with representatives of Syria’s Christian communities.
Diplomatic sources said Barrot told the Christian leaders that France was committed to a pluralistic Syria with equal rights for all, including minority groups.
Syria’s civil war — which started in 2011, sparked by the Assad government’s brutal repression of democracy protests — saw Germany, France and a host of other countries shutter their diplomatic missions in Damascus.
The conflict killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and left Syria fragmented and ravaged.
The new authorities have called for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Syria under Assad to allow for reconstruction.
Paris is due to host an international summit on Syria later this month, following a similar meeting in December in Jordan.