Saydnaya: The Assads’ Death Camp

The story of Saydnaya prison explains the origins of the Assad regime’s murderous madness and reveals the power relations, implications and responsibilities that extend far beyond the country’s borders. This is the secret story of Saydnaya prison, told through the testimonies of prisoners seeking truth and justice, and documented by previously unseen images smuggled out by prisoners over the years and by the secret archives of the military penitentiary.

In 1955, former SS officer, Alois Brunner, arrived in Damascus to set up the Syrian intelligence services. Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s right-hand man and architect of the Final Solution, trained Hafez al-Assad’s comrades-in-arms during his rise to power and in the years after he took office in 1971. To design Saydnaya in 1987, the dictatorship turned to its other totalitarian inspiration: this new prison would be modeled on a penitentiary in the GDR, Syria’s ally during the Cold War. Thus Saydnaya is the offspring of two 20th century totalitarian regimes.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, fearing that his regime would be overthrown by Washington, Bashar al-Assad transformed Saydnaya into a veritable jihad laboratory. Prisoners were trained and sent by the Syrian services to Iraq to attack Americans. When the Syrian Revolution broke out in 2011, the regime released hundreds of Islamists imprisoned in Saydnaya, convinced that the jihadization of the uprising would lead to its failure. But these Islamists ended up controlling two-thirds of Syrian territory and helped establish the Islamic State organization there.

Now in the hands of the new masters of Damascus, Saydnaya prison has become symbolic with the abuses of the Assad regime. The call for justice for its victims continues to grow.