Syrian rescuers end search for secret cells in Saydnaya prison

White Helmets rescue teams say they have ended their search operation for possible detainees in secret cells or basements of Syria’s notorious Saydnaya military prison without finding anyone.

Specialized teams, assisted by K9 canine units and people familiar with the layout, searched the prison and its grounds on Monday, as crowds gathered in the hope of finding their missing relatives.

“The search did not uncover any closed or hidden areas within the facility,” a White Helmets statement said.

The news came as rebel fighters said they had found nearly 40 bodies with signs of torture in a hospital morgue in the capital, Damascus.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Islamist militant group whose offensive led to the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday said former senior officials who oversaw the torture of political prisoners during the country’s 13-year civil war would be held accountable.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said the names of the officials would be published and the repatriation of those who had fled to other countries would be sought. Rewards will also be offered to anyone who provides information about his whereabouts, he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, says nearly 60,000 people were tortured and killed in Assad government prisons.

Human rights groups say more than 100,000 people have gone missing since Assad ordered a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011 that sparked the civil war.

The Turkey-based Association of Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) said in a 2022 report that the prison “effectively became a death camp” after the start of the conflict.

More than 30,000 detainees were estimated to have been executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation at the center between 2011 and 2018.

It also cited released inmates who said at least 500 other detainees had been executed between 2018 and 2021.

ADMSP also described how “salt chambers” were built to serve as primitive mortuaries to store the bodies before they were transferred to the Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus for registration and burial in tombs on military grounds. The families of those detained never received their bodies, he said.

Amnesty International used the phrase “human slaughterhouse” to describe Saydnaya and alleged that the executions had been authorized at the highest levels of Assad’s government and that such practices amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Assad government dismissed Amnesty’s claims as “baseless” and “lacking in truth”, insisting that all executions in Syria followed due process.