Sednaya Prison
Visualization of Sednaya Prison by Amnesty International
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| Location | Sednaya, Syria |
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| Status | Open |
Coordinates: 33°39′54″N 36°19′43″E / 33.66500°N 36.32861°E
Sednaya Prison (Arabic: سجن صيدنايا) is a military prison near Damascus in Syria operated by the government of Bashar al-Assad. The prison has been used to hold thousands of prisoners, both civilian detainees and anti-government rebels.Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015." According to the US State Department a crematorium was constructed with the purpose of hiding the evidence of the thousands murdered at the prison.
Overall, human rights organizations have identified over 27 prisons and detention centers ran by Assad's regime around the country where detainees are routinely tortured and killed. A defector from Assad's sources smuggled out tens of thousands of photographs from these prisons, showing the bodies of those who had been murdered. The defector stated that he had personally photographed the dead and that archives of thousand more such photographs of other victims existed.
A former inmate of the prison who was detained for participating in a peaceful non-violent protest told Amnesty International that at Sednaya prisoners were forced to choose between dying themselves or killing one of their own relatives or friends. The former inmate also stated that in the first prison he was at, prisoners were also forced into cannibalism, but that prison was "heaven" compared to Sednaya Prison. According to the inmate, the other prison (Branch 215) was "to interrogate" (including through torture), but when that was done, you were moved to Sednaya "to die".
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