‘Until my last breath’: Searching for relatives at Syria’s ‘slaughterhouse’

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Sednaya, Syria – For decades, Sednaya prison was only ever mentioned in hushed tones in Syria. Torture and death were known to be routine in this place everyone called the “human slaughterhouse”.

But on the evening of December 7, that all ended when Syrian opposition fighters burst through doors and liberated the prisoners.

In no time, thousands of Syrians descended on the prison in the mountains north of Damascus, desperately seeking news of the loved ones they believed had disappeared behind the prison’s walls.

Standing in front of the prison, Jumaa Jubbu, who is from al-Kafir in Idlib, said: “The liberation [of Syria] is an indescribable joy.

“But the joy is incomplete because there are [hundreds of thousands] of missing detainees, and we haven’t heard any news about them at all.”

Sednaya prison, families seeking loved ones

False hope

Sednaya’s two buildings may have been holding as many as 20,000 prisoners, according to Amnesty International.

Many of the prisoners were freed a week ago – on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. But by Monday, thousands of people were still waiting for news.

The scene inside the prison was chaotic. Rumours were circulating that there were hidden underground sections of the prison which they could not access.

A former prisoner told Al Jazeera that military police had told him there were three underground floors with thousands of people held there. This week, people were using water conductors in the hopes of finding gaps in the walls or floors.

At one point, a loud bang rang out from a far wall of the prison and shouts spread through the crowd.

Someone had broken through and there were hopes they had found an entry to the rumoured cells. People began running towards the sound, shouting “God is the greatest”.

But, seconds later, the shouts died down and people turned away – a false hope. There was no entrance.

“We’re waiting, hoping that God will guide us to find the underground prison, because most of the prisoners who were released before, they say the prison has three underground levels,” Jubbu said. “We only saw one floor.”

Jubbu said he was searching for 20 people from his village, among them his cousins. All had been taken in the early years of the war, between 2011 and 2013 and were believed to have ended up at the “slaughterhouse”.

But just a few hours later, a statement was released by the Association of Detainees and Missing in Sednaya Prison which said the last liberated prisoner had been released at 11am the day before.

The White Helmets, Syria’s Civil Defence force, continued to search but finally suspended operations on Tuesday after finding no more prisoners.

‘The smells are indescribable’

Syrian opposition fighters liberated Aleppo, Hama, and Homs on their way to Damascus. In each city, they opened up the prison doors and liberated tens of thousands of people.

But more remain missing.

On the road to Sednaya, people drove as far as they could before the crush of people forced them to park and continue on foot.

Young and old, men and women, some holding children – all climbed up the unpaved incline to the infamous prison.

Under the now-defeated regime, Sednaya was a military prison where many were held on charges of “terrorism” which, in reality, meant had been arrested for any number of arbitrary reasons.

Many of the people Al Jazeera spoke to there said their relatives had done nothing wrong.

Some weren’t even sure their loved ones were here, they had come because they’d heard from someone that their relative “might” be here. Or they had checked other prisons and still hadn’t found any trace.

Mohammad al-Bakour, 32, said his brother Abdullah was arrested in 2012 for protesting peacefully in Aleppo. He has not seen him since.

At 2am the previous morning – around the time al-Assad fled Damascus for Moscow – al-Bakour headed straight from his home town near Aleppo to Sednaya to search for his brother.

“His children are now young adults, they don’t remember him and wouldn’t recognise him,” al-Bakour said.

Inside, he searched the prison for any sign of Abdullah.

“The smells in there are indescribable. The suffering of the prisoners inside is unimaginable,” he said. “Many times, they wished for death but couldn’t find it. Death became one of the prisoners’ dreams.”

Life in limbo

At Sednaya, many prisoners said they had been tortured and raped. Others were killed so the world won’t know what happened to them.

The corpse of prominent activist Mazen al-Hamada was found in a military hospital morgue showing signs of torture.

Another former prisoner, Youssef Abu Wadie, described to Al Jazeera how the guards treated inmates: “They would knock on the door, yell, ‘Quiet, you dog!’ and wouldn’t let us speak. The food was scarce. They would take us outside, beat us, break us.

“Sometimes two people would hold us down and beat us. They would drag us around and take away our medicine.”

Many inmates told Amnesty International in 2016 that they were not allowed any contact with the outside world or to send anything to family members.

In many cases, families of prisoners were told incorrectly that a prisoner had died, according to Amnesty’s report. Most inmates in the report had also witnessed at least one death during their time in Sednaya.

Without any confirmed proof of life or death for their relatives and friends, many Syrians continue life in limbo. Almost all of them say that without any official confirmation, they will continue searching.

One of those people is 50-year-old Lamis Salama. She was also at Sednaya on Monday looking for news of her son, who had been detained seven years previously and would now be 33 years old; and of her brother, who was arrested 12 years ago.

“My feelings are fear, terror. I want to see my son, I want to know if he’s alive or dead,” Salama said. “This is a pain in my heart. If he’s dead, I could stop looking and start trying to accept that, but if he’s alive, I’ll keep searching for him until my last breath, just to know where he is.”