The victims of the chemical attacks carried out by Assad have described the gruesome sight of “burned bodies,” while those who survived imprisonment struggle to remember their own identities. Efforts are underway to track down the henchmen of the dictator responsible for these atrocities.
During Assad’s 53-year reign, Syria was isolated from the international community, concealing the horrific crimes committed by the oppressive regime. However, these atrocities are now being exposed for the world to see.
Death was a regular occurrence in Syria, specifically in a region called Ghouta.
The incident took place in Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus that was held by opposition forces. In 2018, Syrian warplanes targeted this area, unleashing a barrage of chemical weapons on the unsuspecting civilians.
Two yellow cylinders were dropped from an air force chopper and went crashing through the top floor of one apartment building while the other landed on a balcony.
The people of the town had adjusted to the deafening sounds of relentless airstrikes – but had been less familiar with the hissing of chlorine gas that escaped the canisters.
In the regular air raids evil Assad ordered over the town, the people looked to find shelter in basements.
But as killer chlorine is heavier than air, the gas sank down through the storeys and below buildings into two basements.
At least 43 people choked to death from the heinous gas attack, with their blistered bodies found to be blue and black when civil defence workers tragically recovered them.
The last rebel group that were fighting in the Douma region surrendered to the regime a day after the gas attack.
Douma has silently grieved for six years following the inhumane assault, but after the spectacular fall of Bashar al-Assad last week, victims are finally able to tell their stories.
One man called Abdulhadi Sariel, 64, lived on the opposite side of the street from where the chlorine cylinders crashed through.
He said his family only survived because they stayed on a higher floor – but one of his daughters still suffers from respiratory problems because of it.
He told the Observer: “No one in that basement came out alive.”
“Their bodies turned to black, their clothes went green and were burnt, they crumbled and stuck to their bodies.”
Abdulhadi even described how the victims clothes “looked like wood,” stressing just how strong, deadly and inhumane the attack was.
He added: “We threw out all of our clothes but [you can still see the effect] on the curtains.
“We can escape the bullets and the tanks, but chemicals travel through the air. We were afraid, children were afraid.”
The Syrian government allowed OPCW investigators to visit Douma a few weeks later, but threatened to kill survivors if they told visitors the truth on what had happened.
Instead, residents like Abdulhadi were told to say that people had died from inhaling smoke and dust – not the raining chemicals.
He explained: “The commanders said ‘if you say a word other than what we tell you, we will kill you’.
“But I always kept the curtains [as evidence] for this moment, when the truth would come out.”
Since Syria spiralled into years of bloodshed under Assad’s regime in 2011, at least 300,000 people have been killed and 100,000 have gone missing.
Aside from being killed in heinous gas attacks or killed on the streets by Assad’s soldiers, citizens would disappear, taken from their homes – presumed to be detained in one of the tyrant’s brutal prisons.
Now the dynasty has spectacularly fallen after Islamist rebels led by Hayat al Tahir al-Sham (HTS) captured key cities in the country, the prisons have been opened and the surviving detainees released.
But the atrocities of the jails have become unveiled, with tortured bodies and piles of clothes discovered at the hellhole sites.
LOOKING FOR SURVIVORS
Thousands of mothers, fathers, siblings and grandparents have poured through the doors of hospitals to see the survivors, hoping to find their missing family members.
But this is proving to be devastatingly hard as the prisoners from the jails are so physically and psychologically traumatised they don’t know who they are.
Syrian citizens have been arguing amongst themselves over patients and whether they are their relatives.
Meanwhile the freed inmates can’t even confirm their own identity due to what they have been put through.
The Sunday Times visited a Damascus hospital where a doctor said a group of five or six men had been brought in from the infamous Sednaya prison.
All had endured such physical and psychological trauma that half of them didn’t know who they were.
One young man could only tragically refer to his prison number: 27.
Dr Muaz Ataya said: “He didn’t remember his name.
“They have no names in the prison. They have only numbers.”
Meanwhile another patient couldn’t even utter any words – terrified of being subjected to the kind of torture he endured while locked up if he spoke.
RAPE, TORTURE AND DEATH
Some held at the horrific prison of Sednaya say they were raped, and in some cases, forced to rape other inmates.
A regular form of punishment was some kind of torture and severe beatings from guards, it’s claimed, which led to individuals suffering life-changing damage like disabilities or death.
Floors of cells were coated in blood and pus from tortured prisoners, according to a 2017 Amnesty report, with the bodies of dead prisoners collected like rubbish at 9am each morning by guards.
Detainees were also forced to follow horrific rules as they were forced as they were deprived the basic necessities of food, water and medicine.
When food would be delivered it would often be cruelly scattered across cell floors by guards with a mixture of blood and dirt.
A human iron press was even discovered that was allegedly used to crush prisoners to death in Sednaya – unveiled in videos shared by rebels as they liberated prisoners.
They also found dozens of red rope nooses used for mass hangings in an execution room.
Other disturbing accounts say the mass hangings occurred once or twice a week on a Monday and Wednesday – chillingly in the middle of the night.
SEARCHING IN MORGUES
As some family members continue to remain hopeful their relatives are alive, some have been met with the horrific reality that the bodies of loved ones could be in a morgue.
Horrifying images shows a morgue filled with the brutalised bodies of Bashar al-Assad’s final torture victims.
Family members have had to queue to see the bodies of tortured inmates to determine if any of them could be their missing loved ones.
Syrian citizens are captured in line to see the bodies with their hands covering their noses – protecting themselves from the stench of death.
The bodies found are believed to be some of the last torture victims under the tyrant’s brutal regime, CNN’s Clarissa Ward reports.
One woman, who couldn’t find her missing mother, brother, or husband, is seen in footage wailing as she throws her hands up in despair.
A doctor is captured desperately helping heartbroken people to find their loved ones, a lot of whom are showing pictures of who they’re looking for.
Footage shows him unzipping body bags while mothers, fathers and siblings howl with grief.
What is Sednaya Prison?
By Annabel Bate, Foreign News Reporter
SEDNAYA Prison – otherwise known as the Human Slaughterhouse – was a military prison near Damascus, Syria.
Operated by the government of Syrian Arab Republic, the hellhole prison was used to hold thousands of inmates that were civilian detainees, anti-government rebels and political prisoners.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated in January 2021 that an overwhelming 30,000 detainees were horrifically executed under the Assad regime in Sednaya.
Guards would use torture as a killing technique, as well as have mass executions.
Some held at the horrific prison of Sednaya say they were raped, and in some cases, forced to rape other inmates.
A regular form of punishment was some kind of torture and sever beatings from guards, it’s claimed, which led to individuals suffering life-changing damage like disabilities or death.
Floors of cells were coated in blood and pus from tortured prisoners, according to a 2017 Amnesty report, with the bodies of dead prisoners collected like rubbish at 9am each morning by guards.
Detainees were also forced to follow horrific rules as they were forced as they were deprived the basic necessities of food, water and medicine.
When food would be delivered it would often be cruelly scattered across cell floors by guards with a mixture of blood and dirt.
Other disturbing accounts say the mass hangings occurred once or twice a week on a Monday and Wednesday – chillingly in the middle of the night.
The unbelievable practices, which human rights groups say amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, were authorised at the highest level of the Syrian government under Assad.
The doctor points towards the bodies and says: “Take a look, this is the crime of the regime.
“Even in the Middle Ages they didn’t torture people like this.”
The corpses are currently only identifiable by number – proving the overwhelming amount that were recovered when the rebels stormed Assad’s inhumane prisons.
Meanwhile another man points out by the state of the corpses clothes, suggesting they may well have been detainees at the infamous Sednaya prison.
POTENTIAL JUSTICE
Not everyone will be given the closure of their loved ones deaths, as Assad’s military intelligence burnt documents and destroyed hard drives before fleeing from the rebels.
But the tyrant’s soldiers didn’t reach a thick book found in the hellhole Sednaya prison however, containing thousands of names of the dead.
A heart-wrenching 29,000 names were counted in the pages and were reportedly tracked over the course of a few years.
And now Assad’s secret files, said to be “bigger than Nuremberg”, have been unveiled as the hunt for the perpetrators begins.
The race is on to track down tyrant Assad’s puppets who inflicted his reign of terror in Syria.
While Putin concocted the plot to smuggle Assad and his family out of Syria and personally granted them political asylum, thousands of the tyrants military and security officials are fleeing too.
But the evidence that holds the cold-blooded murderers accountable has been kept throughout the years in a stack of brown cardboard boxes behind a locked door top-secret office in a European city.
The 406 boxes seen by The Sunday Times contain more than 1.3 million documents that could land Assad and his henchmen in prison with lifetime sentences.
The archives have been kept for over a decade by 61-year-old Canadian lawyer and war crimes investigator Bill Wiley.
Wiley’s organisation is the Commission for International Justice and Accountability that’s funded by the British, German and US governments.
The lawyer has had a team of Syrians on the ground taking life-threatening risks to garner evidence before smuggling it out the country.
They used various means of transports disguised as different professions to get the shocking files to a safe place – with some team members kidnapped or even killed.
Wiley said: “This is the most documented repression in history.
“Like the Nazis but with computers.”
And like the Nazi regime it was, with Assad’s father Hafez who ruled brutal power from 1970 to 2000 is believed to have been advised in various torture methods by a former Nazi, Alois Brunner.
The sick Brunner found refuge in Damascus after serving as deputy to the Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann.
The papers go through 50 years of the regime, containing details of imprisonments, executions, disappearance, sexual abuse and torture as well as chemical strikes on citizens.
Wiley said that from the documents it’s clear that “Assad was directing things” but believes that he will not escape his crimes.
The lawyer added: “It may take time but two weeks ago who would have believed Assad would be out of power and fleeing.
“The world has changed and everything is possible.”
