MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the short weeks since the stunning fall of the regime of Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad, startling discoveries of the brutal regime are coming to light. Thousands of Syrians held in the dictatorship's prisons are now speaking out. They are describing a horrifying system of widespread torture and mass executions to eliminate and silence opposition. NPR has gathered testimony from several former prisoners of one of Syria's most notorious prisons, which inmates dubbed the slaughterhouse. NPR's Ruth Sherlock and Jawad Rizkallah bring us their stories.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Adham leads us through the labyrinth of concrete corridors of Sednaya prison. He knows where he's going. He was detained here for nearly six years.
ADHAM: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: He says he still can't believe that he's out, that he's free. We keep walking. It's only been less than a week since rebels freed the prisoners as Assad's regime fell. Adham's eyes protrude from his gaunt face. His body is skin and bone. He's still too afraid to use his full name, but he wants to show us what he went through.
Taking us up to the next floor.
ADHAM: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: He suddenly stops at a huge, red, plastic container on the floor, still full of cloudy, dirty water.
JAWAD RIZKALLAH, BYLINE: This water container - they used to - (speaking Arabic). This was for torture. They would put their heads into the water.
SHERLOCK: Guards here in Sednaya would drown and beat the prisoners, he says. He described inmates being stripped naked and starved. We pass his former cell, and he picks up a small plastic container off the floor. Inmates were given their meals in these, the portions smaller than you'd feed a baby. All this was routine. But Adham then describes an even darker ritual within these walls - systematic, methodical mass killing.
RIZKALLAH: The slaughterhouse is upstairs.
SHERLOCK: What does he mean?
ADHAM: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: "As prisoners, we know that the slaughterhouse area is above."
(Speaking Arabic).
ADHAM: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: He takes us up to a huge, empty room. Metal cages line the walls.
ADHAM: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: (Speaking Arabic).
ADHAM: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: He says this is where people were executed, hanged in large numbers. Amnesty International has documented executions in Sednaya. In one four-year period, they say as many as 13,000 people were executed here, but the testimony in the report ended in 2015. NPR spoke with former inmates who recount mass executions continuing right up to last year.
TALAAT HUSSEIN TALAA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Thirty-two-year-old Talaat Hussein Talaa says he never thought people could be so violent and evil. He says the killings followed a regular schedule.
TALAA: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: On Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, they would collect those that they wanted to execute.
TALAA: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: They would come before breakfast.
SHERLOCK: Talaa looks emaciated. He's recovering at home in Damascus and says his skin is still too sensitive for him to go outside in the sun after six years in Sednaya.
TALAA: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: They would come in - around four or five guards. They would call out for the people in a low voice. And people that were called out, they knew they were going to be executed.
SHERLOCK: The guards put these prisoners in a separate cell and kept them there without food or water until Wednesday. He says that was the killing day. Another freed Sednaya detainee, who goes by the name Abu Hassan, picks up the story.
ABU HASSAN: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: And they beat them. They beat them.
SHERLOCK: He says the guards would call the prisoners' names out 10 at a time. Then they beat them within earshot of the other detainees. Then, after midnight, the executions began. None of the interviewees we spoke with saw the killings, but all three recount hearing a similar sound. They believe it was a table being snatched from under the prisoners' feet in the moments they were hung. Former prisoner Talaa says this would continue for hours.
TALAA: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: "We hear it. You can hear it."
SHERLOCK: Talaa's cell was close to the shower rooms used by the guards. He says, after the long killing nights, he could hear them shouting at each other.
TALAA: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: "We would hear them argue about who's going to shower first to get the blood off them."
SHERLOCK: Oh, my God.
Abu Hassan remembers Thursdays were less violent.
HASSAN: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: "On Thursday, it's a very relaxing day for us because the cops or the guards would be tired from all of the executions, and they would be sleeping all day."
SHERLOCK: This grim routine of gathering prisoners from Saturday and executing them by Wednesday came to rule prison life.
HASSAN: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: OK.
SHERLOCK: Abu Hassan says these happened every two weeks and then later dropped to once a month. And all three former prisoners recall the executions involved dozens, sometimes as many as 70 people. We don't know exactly how many people were killed in Sednaya, but the account fits a documented pattern. Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, told NPR in an interview that under Assad, Syria had established a, quote, "machinery of death."
(CROSSTALK)
SHERLOCK: When the regime fell and the prison's doors flew open, families rushed in to search for their loved ones. But on this day, many turned desperate. Fewer than 2,000 prisoners had come out of Sednaya. The crowd in the prison couldn't believe there weren't more people still alive inside.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: One man shouts, maybe there are hidden cells.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Some start lifting manhole covers...
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CLANGING)
SHERLOCK: ...And even start trying to break up concrete floors with metal pipes...
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CLANGING)
SHERLOCK: ...Hoping there might be people alive underneath. But there were no secret cells, leaving many Syrians searching for the missing and the dead. As they reckon with this huge loss, former inmate Adham has to figure out how to build back his life. But how to return days of the week to being just days when, for so many years, they were filled with horrors?
ADHAM: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: "I don't know," says Adham as he walks out of the prison for the last time.
Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Sednaya prison, Damascus.
(SOUNDBITE OF STORMZY SONG, "FIRE + WATER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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