Sednaya Prison

Sednaya Prison (Arabic: سجن صيدنايا Sijn Ṣaydnāyā), also known as the "Human Slaughterhouse" (المسلخ البشري), was a Syrian military prison and death camp that the Assad regime operated near Damascus from 1986 until the 2024 Syrian opposition offensives. For just over the first two decades after the first group of inmates arrived in 1987, the prison routinely held civilian detainees and political prisoners, but after the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, it was also used to hold anti-government rebels.

The prison was notorious for being the site of severe human rights violations and war crimes perpetrated by Syrian government forces, including torture, rape, and mass executions. In January 2021, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that 30,000 prisoners had been killed by the Assad regime at Sednaya since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 that between 5,000 and 13,000 people had been victims of extrajudicial killings at the prison between September 2011 and December 2015.

On 8 December 2024, the prison fell into the hands of Syrian opposition forces after the prison administration agreed to surrender the facility in exchange for their safe withdrawal amidst the opposition offensive into Damascus. Subsequently, the remaining prisoners in the "white" building were released. Rebel forces, however, required several additional days to break into the larger "red" building.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime during the opposition offensives, the Syrian caretaker government compiled and publicly released a list of escaped Sednaya Prison personnel, who are now among the most wanted fugitives in Syria—second only to members of the Assad family.