Saydnaya: Syria's most notorious prison where inmates 'smelled the burning of bodies'
Josie Ensor
Luna Safwan, Beirut
1 June 2017 • 3:00pm
It is the smell of burning flesh that has stuck with Omar al-Shogre in the years since his release from Syria’s most notorious prison.
The 21-year-old recalls a particular evening in late December or early January 2014 - he cannot be sure which as he found it hard to keep track of time in his dark, squalid cell.
“There was a big fire that day, but it did not smell like any regular fire,” Mr Shogre said. “The prison guards told us that there had been an electrical fault, but there was no electricity in
most parts of the jail and that made us suspicious.”
The smell was pungent, like human flesh or hair being singed, he told the Telegraph from Sweden, where he is now seeking asylum.
“There were a lot of dead bodies each week, too many to dispose of normally,” he said. “Which is why I think they were sending them to a crematorium.”
Mr Shogre has held the suspicion for many years, but it was not until last month that it seemed to be confirmed.
The US state department
claimed the Syrian regime has been burning the bodies of thousands of dead inmates at Saydnaya, a prison facility outside Damascus, in an attempt to cover up the scale of their killings and dispose of evidence that could be used to prosecute war crimes.
Some officials drew a parallel to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
“The attempt to cover up mass murders in the (Bashar) Assad crematorium is reminiscent of the 20th century’s worst offenses against humanity,” said Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations.
The state department believes the crematorium was built inside the prison complex in early 2013.
They released satellite images which showed buildings covered in snow - except for one, suggesting a significant internal heat source. “That would be consistent with a crematorium,” Stuart Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state, said.
Officials added that a chimney, what looked to be a firewall, and an
air intake all suggestive of a place to burn bodies.
The Syrian government refuted the claims, suggesting disposing of bodies in such a way would be “unIslamic”.
Cremation is considered “haram,” that is forbidden in Islam. Islamic teachings on the dead require that the deceased be cleaned, shrouded, prayed for, buried in the earth and visited with reverence. Any other treatment, including cremation, is considered an act of disrespect and sin.
Saydnaya has been called a “human slaughterhouse”, where torture, deprivation and overcrowding is so severe that the United Nations said it amounts to an “extermination.”
Thousands have disappeared inside the prison’s walls since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011.
More than 17,000 people have died in custody across the country between March 2011 and December 2015, according to Amnesty International. But the large number of missing and unaccounted for means the real figure is likely to be much higher.
Mr Shogre was 17 years old when he was arrested at his home in Syria's coastal province of Tartus in November 2012. He had been taking part in anti-government protests but believed the security services had taken particular exception to his Sunni Muslim name.
He spent three years in 10 different prisons, 10 months of which in Saydnaya in a cell - 7ft wide by 7ft tall - with up to 11 others.
There were no windows and with only a few candles lighting the corridors, Mr Shogre saw little of his surroundings.
They were never allowed to directly address the guards or to look them in the eye.
He was beaten countless times, but saw others tortured much worse. He said inmates were sometimes ordered by the guards to kill each other and if they refused they threatened to kill their family members held in prison instead.
He once went 10 days without food or water and said others became so desperate they began drinking their own urine.
By the time he was released in June 2015, he weighed just five and a half stone and had lost all his hair.
Mr Shogre, and a number of other former inmates the Telegraph spoke to, recounted seeing dozens of dead bodies during their detention. Some had died from starvation, others from the effects of extreme torture or illness.
One, using the name Abu Khaled to protect his identity, said he remembers in the spring of 2013 being asked to help dispose of 15 corpses.
"Before taking me and the other detainees to Saydnaya, a police officer asked for our help in arranging the dead bodies in plastic bags,” said Abu Khaled, 43, from Hama, who was arrested in 2012.
“We arrived at Tishreen (military hospital near Damascus) as 17 in total seeking treatment that day, only two of us came out alive. We all got this stomach infection, but because most of the others had injuries due to torture they did not survive,” he said. He believes the bodies were then taken to the crematorium.
He said the number of deaths inside the prisons began to rise in 2013, when the regime started carrying out widespread arrests against opposition activists and anyone seen as sympathetic to the rebellion.
A report released last year by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry quoted a defector from an intelligence agency as saying officers had orders to arrest male demonstrators between the ages of 16 and 40.
Several former detainees said that since 2013 few have made it out of Saydnaya alive to testify.
“The number released alive since then can be counted on fingers,” said Ahmed al-Ahmed, a former air force pilot from Aleppo who defected and spent 13 years in prison before his release in 2011.
“Most of those who smelled or witnessed anything to do with the crematorium are likely to have been the ones in solitary confinement waiting to be executed. They are likely long dead, and the truth will have died with them,” he said.
The mountain of documentation on the Assad regime’s crimes during the six-year war is perhaps greater than in any conflict before it.
However, the perpetrators remain at large and there is no clear path to bring the evidence before a court.
Mr Ahmed is trying to form a union of former Saydnaya inmates so they can share any information they have about potential crimes against humanity they witnessed.
“I hope it will lead to some form of punishment,” he said, but he is not hopeful.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/01/saydnaya-syrias-notorious-prison-inmates-smelled-burning-bodies/