By Al-Fassel and AFP | 2023-10-03

Syrian regime authorities abused and left detainees to die at a Damascus military hospital, using the facility to cover up the torture of prisoners, a rights group and former detainees said.

Sick prisoners sent from detention facilities to the Tishreen Military Hospital rarely received any medical attention, per a report issued Tuesday (October 3) by the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP).

Instead, security forces at the hospital jail and even medical and administrative staff inflicted "brutal torture" on detainees, including physical and psychological violence, according to the Türkiye-based watchdog's report, "Buried in Silence."

The report covers abuses from the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011 to 2020, but the authors said they believe many of the practices persist.

Abu Hamza, 43, said he was taken to the jail at the Tishreen hospital three times during his incarceration but saw a doctor only once.

"Prisoners were afraid to go to the hospital, because many did not return," said Abu Hamza, who was jailed for seven years, including at the notorious Saydnaya (Sednaya) prison on the Damascus outskirts.

"Those who were very sick would be left to die in the hospital lockup," said Abu Hamza, who like others used first names or pseudonyms for fear of reprisals.

"If we could walk, we'd be sent back to prison," he added.

ADMSP was founded by former detainees held in Saydnaya, Syria's largest jail, which has become a by-word for torture and the darkest abuses of the regime.

'A black hole that swallows everyone'

In a report issued in October 2022, ADMSP estimated that more than 30,000 detainees were either executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation between 2011 and 2018 in Saydnaya prison.

The Syrian regime is believed to have executed at least 500 additional detainees between 2018 and 2021, according to testimonies of survivors documented by the association.

The 2022 report revealed how Tishreen hospital disposed of the bodies of detainees following their executions, transporting them in refrigerated "meat trucks" for burial in mass graves.

The bodies of detainees who were tortured to death or died of disease or hunger in prison cells were collected and kept for up to 48 hours in "salt rooms" before being transferred to Tishreen, where a death certificate was issued, it said.

The report exposed the military hierarchy, chain of command and orders in Saydnaya prison, which it described as "one of the most secret places in Syria."

It described the prison's layout, defenses and administrative structure in detail, and explained how it was fortified to repel possible external attacks and suppress prison inmates.

It revealed how the prison complex, located atop a hill in a mountainous area north of Damascus, was protected by hundreds of guards against internal and external threats and surrounded by two minefields.

One unit was specifically tasked with monitoring all incoming and outgoing terrestrial and radio communications into the prison and the surrounding area, as well as all nearby radio communications, the report said.

"The regime wanted this place to be a black hole that swallows everyone who approaches it and no information comes out of it with complete impunity and no justice in sight," said ADMSP co-founder Diab Sariya, a former detainee.

Left for dead among corpses

Abu Hamza said guards at the hospital prison "once barged in and ordered us to lie on the ground," beating them for 15 minutes before leaving.

According to the new ADMSP report, inmates who died in custody from torture or poor conditions, particularly at Saydnaya, were taken to the Tishreen hospital and then to "mass graves" near the capital.

Inmates arriving at the hospital were first held "in the same room where bodies of detainees were collected," and sick detainees were forced to help transport prisoners' corpses, the report said.

Abu Hamza said he was made to toil for hours, barefoot and in the bitter cold, loading bodies into a vehicle at Saydnaya prison and then offloading them at Tishreen hospital near its jail.

There, security forces wrote a number on the corpse or on a piece of paper. A photographer would then take pictures of the dead.

The ADMSP report said no autopsies were conducted and the hospital issued "death certificates with false information," often citing heart attack, kidney failure or stroke as the cause of death.

Sometimes inmates "between life and death" were placed among the corpses and left to die or even killed, according to the report.

Abu Hamza recalled a detainee who was "fighting for his life" in the hospital jail.

"They did not bring a doctor. Instead, they put him aside, among the corpses. They left him to die," he said.

The report said a jail officer would sometimes kill very sick detainees, or prisoners would be ordered to take part in doing so.

Central role in disappearances

Tishreen hospital plays a "central role in enforced disappearances, covering up torture, falsifying the causes of death" and other abuses amounting to "crimes against humanity" said ADMSP co-founder Diab Serriya.

"What happens inside Tishreen hospital and other military hospitals is a systematic policy" adopted by the authorities, he added.

"The report provides accurate information about brutal torture crimes that occurred in Tishreen Military Hospital," he said. "It also precisely identifies the burial places of deceased detainees and the entities that keep copies of their files."

The regime "cannot deny or claim ignorance of the identity of the victims," the report said, adding that "nothing prevents it from revealing the names and numbers of deceased detainees except political will."

The presence of such records and documentation provides an opportunity "to clarify the fate of missing persons in Syria and their whereabouts, to determine a first starting point for revealing the fate of the victims," the report said.

Regime's foreign facilitators

Rights groups have long accused Bashar al-Assad's regime of torturing detainees and executing prisoners without fair trials.

In 2011, Syrian regime forces cracked down on peaceful protesters, triggering a complex war that has left more than 500,000 dead and forced millions to flee.

Up to one-fifth of that toll died in regime-run prisons, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Some of the horrific images of dead Syrians smuggled out by "Caesar," a defector who had worked as a photographer for the military police, were shot inside Tishreen hospital, according to human rights groups.

A Syrian doctor is currently on trial in Germany accused of torture, murder and crimes against humanity while working in military hospitals in his homeland.

Lawsuits have been filed elsewhere in Europe, as well as the United States and at the International Court of Justice, against the Syrian government and officials on accusations of torture.

Sanctions also have repeatedly targeted the regime's foreign facilitators.

By sending militias into Syria to prop up the regime, Iran has been complicit in the regime's slaughter of Syrian civilians, observers have noted.

Militias financed by Russia also support Syrian regime forces, particularly in the southern part of the country.