A former prisoner shares harrowing tale of rape and torture in Assad’s prisons

A former inmate in one of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s prisons has revealed how he saw a boy cry for his mother while he was sexually abused by his torturers. 

René, one of six million Syrians who fled the country following the brutal civil war in 2012, was imprisoned for being gay and for going to a pro-democracy protests by Assad’s secret police. 

He said that while he was in prison, he saw a boy no older than 16 getting raped by Assad’s guards. 

René told the BBC: ‘There was a boy. He was 15 or 16 years old. They were raping him, and he was calling his mother. He was saying, ‘Mama… my mother… Mom’.’

René himself was also raped, by three guards who laughed when he begged for mercy. 

‘Nobody heard me. I was alone,’ he recalled back in 2012. 

He said he was abused every for six months by the same guard. 

The former prisoner said that memories of his time in the horrific prison system came back to him upon seeing the swathe of prisoners leaving Damascus after Assad fell. 

An aerial view of the Sednaya Military Prison after armed groups, opposing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime take control in Damascus

A view of dead bodies, who were tortured to death, at Al-Mujtahid Hospital as teams carry out investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Syria on December 10, 2024

‘I’m not in prison now, I’m here. But I saw myself in the photos and the images of the people in Syria. I was so happy for them, but I saw myself there’, he said. 

‘I saw the old version of me there. I saw when they raped me, and when they tortured me. I saw everything in flashback.’

Since Assad’s fall, the conditions of the prisons he ran have been revealed in detail for the first time. 

The infamous Sednaya Prison near Damascus, nicknamed the ‘Human Slaughterhouse’, was the epicentre of this systematic terror where huge numbers of detainees were subjected to all manner of inhumane treatments and executed. 

Rebel fighters were cast into jails along with intellectuals, activists and regular civilians – all were subjected to heinous treatment, in many cases for several decades.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights claims that since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, over 157,000 people remain under arrest or have been forcibly disappeared – including 5,274 children and 10,221 women.

More than 15,000 are said to have died under torture in that time.

The network also documented 72 different methods of regime torture that included electrocuting genitals or hanging weights from them; burning with oil, metal rods, gunpowder or flammable pesticides; crushing heads between a wall and the prison cell’s door, and inserting needles or metal pins into bodies.

A view of dead bodies, who were tortured to death, at Al-Mujtahid Hospital as teams carry out investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Syria on December 10, 2024

A view of dead bodies, who were tortured to death, at Harasta Military Hospital as teams carry out an investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison

This ‘iron press’ is believed to have been used to crush, torture and execute prisoners 

For most detainees, the horror began immediately upon arrest, often with savage beatings en-route to detention facilities. 

Prisoners endured brutal ‘welcome parties,’ where they were thrashed with hoses, silicone bars, and wooden sticks.

Survivors have described being suspended by their wrists for hours, enduring electric shocks, and being burned with cigarettes, in horrific accounts given to the New York Times and Amnesty International.

Once trapped behind bars, prisoners quickly became acquainted with all manner of novel torture methods – some so notorious they had been given dark monikers.

One such grotesque device nicknamed the ‘flying carpet’ saw prisoners shackled to a board strapped onto a flexible board split in half by chain metal hinges.

Guards would then lift the bottom half of the board and fold the prisoner’s legs back toward them, slowly and excruciatingly crushing them into horrific positions.

Another such torture tactic was called the ‘dulab’, in which victims’ bodies were contorted into a rubber tyre, their heads pressed into their knees, before being rolled around and beaten mercilessly.

Many guards are said to have delighted in meting out such cruelty.

Inmates often had to stage macabre and degrading performances, forced to mimic animals – dogs, donkeys, and cats – with beatings for any misstep.