Chilling aerial shots show hellhole Syrian jail where ‘13,000 prisoners were hanged by Assad and buried in mass graves’

THESE aerial images show the hellhole Syrian jail known as the ‘human slaughterhouse’ where Bashar al-Assad has been accused of hanging 13,000 prisoners over five years.

Security forces carried out a “calculated campaign of mass hangings and extermination” at Saydnaya Prison near Damascus between 2011 and 2015, a shock report by Amnesty International claims.

It found that at least once a week, up to 50 people were taken from their cells and given two-minute trials before being blindfolded, beaten and hanged in the basement.

Guards also forced prisoners to rape other inmates as part of widespread torture in the jail where an average of 10 died each day, the human rights group alleged.

Chilling aerial images of the jail show the execution room as well as vast graves where all the executed prisoners were buried.

Conditions were reportedly so cramped inside the filthy jail that many died of suffocation, with some being forced to sleep in cells with the dead bodies.

“Saydnaya Military Prison is where the Syrian state quietly slaughters its own people,” the report states.

“The victims are overwhelmingly ordinary civilians who are thought to oppose the government.

“Since 2011, thousands of people have been executed in mass hangings, carried out at night and in the utmost secrecy.”

Prisoners are kept in the “red building” of the three-winged prison until they are taken before a military court in Damascus.

There they are sentenced to death in show trials “which last between one and three minutes”, according to the report.

Prison officers reportedly refer to the day of mass hangings as the “party”.

“They are brought to a cell in the basement of the red building, where they are severely beaten over the course of two or three hours,” the report says.

“In the middle of the night, they are blindfolded and transferred in delivery trucks or minibuses to the white building.

“There, they are taken into a room in the basement and hanged.

“This takes place once or twice a week, and on each occasion between 20 and 50 people are hanged to death.”

Thousands of prisoners are held at the military-run prison, one of the country's largest detention centres.

Amnesty accused the Syrian government of carrying out a "policy of extermination" there by repeatedly torturing detainees and withholding food, water and medical care.

Prisoners were raped or forced to rape each other, and guards would feed detainees by tossing meals onto cell floors, which were often covered in dirt and blood.

A twisted set of "special rules" governed the facility and inmates were not allowed to speak.

One former military officer said he could hear "gurgling" as people were hanged in an execution room below.

"If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling," said Hamid, who was arrested in 2011.

"We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then," he told Amnesty.

It is the first evidence that allegedly proves Assad, 51, has authorised torture to punish opponents and crush dissent.

He has long been suspected of such action.

Amnesty said: “It’s inconceivable that these large-scale and systematic practices have not been authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government.”

But President Assad looks set to hold on to power because rebel forces have been repelled and a peace deal is under discussion.

Representatives of his regime are preparing to meet officials from Turkey, who have backed the rebels, later this month.
Russia and Iran, both Assad allies, will also join the talks.

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368