By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-01-17 20:11:06 | Updated at 2025-01-30 19:03:19
1 week ago
CV NEWS FEED // A Syrian Christian man recently recounted his harrowing experiences in the Sednaya prison, infamously dubbed the “human slaughterhouse” for its treatment of political and “special” prisoners under the Assad regime.
An interview by The Daily Compass, which identified the man only as Charbel, sheds light on the atrocities committed within the facility, where hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have been tortured and killed under the regime since its inception in 1987.
A well-connected rival businessman accused Charbel of espionage, resulting in the latter’s imprisonment for four and a half years. Charbel recounted his initial detentions and eventual transfer to Sednaya, where he witnessed unimaginable horrors.
“Believe me, when I came out, I forgot everything,” Charbel told The Daily Compass. “I don’t know how to explain it, this place rips your heart out of your chest. You feel nothing.”
While Charbel endured these conditions, his family struggled outside the prison walls. They visited him when permitted, but their attempts to secure his release through the corrupt system cost them thousands of dollars. His wife eventually filed for divorce, unable to face the uncertainty of his release.
Charbel, who hails from a middle-class Christian family in Damascus, noted that as a Christian, he was treated slightly better than his Sunni counterparts. However, he stressed the psychological toll and the constant fear that permeated the prison.
Charbel recalled the experience of hearing a man die in the cell next to him. The man had once fled to Holland, where he publicly denounced the atrocities of Assad’s prisons. Years later, he was arrested again and brought back to Sednaya, where he contracted cholera.
“For three days we heard him screaming in pain while the guards kicked him to make him stop moaning,” Charbel said. “After three days of agony he died.”
As Charbel reflected on his time in Sednaya, he expressed a desire to confront the individual responsible for his wrongful imprisonment, saying he intended to “track him down.”
“I want to call him and tell him I am out; that will be my revenge,” Charbel said. “The rest I leave to God.”
Following the December 2024 fall of the Assad regime in Syria, some prisoners have been released from Sednaya. However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that only 24,000 people out of a list of 136,000 were freed from prisons across the country. According to The Daily Compass, the fate of the remainder is uncertain “but sadly imaginable.”
