NADIA AL-BUKAI Just before we begin, I wanted to let you know that this podcast contains some descriptions of physical violence and psychological distress. Please use discretion.
On March 27, 2008, Bashar al-Assad was getting ready for a big day: the arrival of presidents and sheikhs of some of the Arab countries to Syria.
ANCHOR For decades, Arab League summits have been marked by rare moments of unity and even more moments of divisions just like this summit here in Damascus. Arab states came together.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Assad was keen to use the event as an opportunity to whitewash his reputation after his regime was accused of ordering the assassination of the prime minister of Lebanon, Rafic al-Hariri, in 2005.
Leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other countries said they wouldn't participate in the event. But Assad went on with hosting the Arab Summit anyway. To him, this event signalled his comeback to the Arab arena, to show them that they were wrong about him.
The situation back then is similar to what he is trying to do now: to re-join the Arab League this year after his expulsion due to the crimes he committed and is still perpetrating against his people. My people.
Little did Assad know that, right at that moment, in 2008, something extraordinary was happening inside Sednaya Prison, the impact of which is still resonating today. Riyad says it felt like …
RIYAD AVLAR The longest riot in the world.
NADIA AL-BUKAI From Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, this is Behind the Sun. I'm Nadia al-Bukai.
Thirty kilometres away from Damascus, the capital of Syria, Riyad and Diab at Sednaya were about to weather a lengthy period of turbulence and chaos in the prison. The detainees of Sednaya would do things no one in the Syrian regime ever thought were possible.
The Syrian regime's response to these events is just one example of how, historically, the regime has resorted to excessive violence to crush any form of dissent and evaded accountability. The reason why what happened in Sednaya in 2008 is so important is because it led to the complete transformation of Sednaya Prison.
DIAB SERRIH This event turned this prison upside down. Its impact endures until today for the people who are detained there or for those who were detained after 2011.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Before we jump into details about this event, let's recap a bit. Last episode, we heard from Diab and Riyad. We learnt from them about how the regime and its intelligence services used fear and violence to submit the Syrians to Assad's will.
The regime created Sednaya in the eighties to detain anyone who would dare to oppose Assad's rule. In 2008, Sednaya was still achieving its purpose, and Riyad and Diab were still there along with thousands of other detainees. But their problem was that, at that time, the prison director, Colonel Ali Kheir Beik, was making their lives as hellish as possible day by day.
RIYAD AVLAR There was no food. There was no water. There was no electricity. There were just the tortures. They came and tortured prisoners.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Between late 2007 and March 2008, he expanded the degree of torture to new levels. The food got worse, and there were also water and electricity cuts. No medical care and no visitations. Nothing.
DIAB SERRIH The situation got to the point of driving several people to think that life had no purpose. Some people started thinking, "This isn't a life. Nobody can take it."
NADIA AL-BUKAI This iron-fist approach created anger and desperation. And that's not the purpose the regime intended for Sednaya. Sednaya was there to create fear and obedience. And this point is important.
On 27 March 2008, in Sednaya's red building, where all the political prisoners were held, a small tooth was going to be the catalyst for everything to come. A detainee had finally seen the prison dentist after a long struggle with unbearable tooth pain. But the dentist didn't treat him. He just removed the tooth. When the man went back to his cell, he was in agony and turned the lights on to go to the cell restroom.
Once one of the guards noticed, he went to the cell and argued with its detainees, demanding that they name whoever lit the room. The prisoners didn't comply. Shaken by their solidarity and defiance, the guard crossed all possible social redlines and went on cursing them, Islam, Prophet Muhammad, God, and the Qur'an.
DIAB SERRIH At this point, the already very upset prisoners started to rebel. They began loudly banging on the doors in the hopes of breaking them down.
NADIA AL-BUKAI When the guard came back with reinforcements, it didn't stop the disobedience, though. It spread its intensity in the entire cell block.
To contain the situation, a middle-ranking officer promised the prisoners that he would punish the soldier who started the upheaval. The prisoners believed him, and everyone went back to their beds. But their anger remained.
Ali Kheir Beik, the prison director, had a different view of things. When he knew about the argument, he considered their defiance an insult to his authority. So, he resorted to the Syrian dictatorship's playbook.
I'm talking about the standard and often repeated manoeuvres and tricks used by regime officials to control the Syrian people and to crush the slightest sign of dissent among them. These tactics are well-documented in countless news, human rights, and Western intelligence reports.
As for Ali Kheir Beik, he decided to use an all-time favourite move from the playbook: vicious violence and collective punishment. He had always believed in violence. Even the prison guards were scared of him and his punishments. The next morning, he went to the cell block with tens of soldiers, determined to teach the detainees a lesson.
DIAB SERRIH He began to insult the whole group, telling them that they didn't have the right to speak this way to the soldier, that the soldier was better than them, that the soldier's combat boots were worthy and more honourable than them.
He promised to punish them immediately. And the soldiers began opening cell after cell in the block, each cell containing between ten and fifteen people, and extracting prisoners one by one to beat and torture them before sending them to solitary confinement.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The torture was extreme and with no mercy. One of those being punished managed to hit back at the soldiers. When his fellow inmates in the corridor saw the battle start between that prisoner and the guards, they immediately joined the clash.
And the prison director fled the scene along with his lieutenants, leaving most of his guards behind. And there, the prisoners took their revenge. They tied the soldiers, took their keys, and opened all the cells in the block. So, that entire block erupted out of their control.
After taking complete control of their block, they opened the doors of the other cell blocks. The entire prison was in a state of revolt.
DIAB SERRIH When they reached us and opened our door, of course, I had to participate. We felt like, "Enough with this prison." We had to get out. We had to tell the people what was happening to us here. We went to the rooftop of the prison.
Of course, the guards were firing into the air. They weren't shooting directly at us on that day.
And we weren't afraid. We were on the rooftop, and we tried to light a fire, but we didn't have the materials to do it. You have nothing. You have your blanket that covers you. If you burn it, you'd die out of cold. So, there's nothing to burn. We tried to make a big flag. But similarly, there was no way to sew things together to make a flag or anything.
NADIA AL-BUKAI When the guards tried to storm the prison again, they failed. And now, the prison director resorted to the playbook of tricks again: When your forces fail, recruit thugs to do your dirty work. He tried to forcibly retake the political prisoners' blocks with the help of inmates convicted of criminal offences from other sections of the prison. The prison administration told them that the political detainees were terrorists and traitors, enemies of the state and the president, and that putting them into their places would be a good deed to the country, and Syria would never forget its "good people."
They were also told that if they succeeded or managed to control the uprising, their sentences might be reconsidered, reduced substantially, or might even get them pardons.
DIAB SERRIH Of course, they failed, because the state of fury we were in was so extreme that ten people wouldn't be able to stop any of us. We wanted to reach the main gates and get out.
Enough. Whatever happens happens.
Of course, this didn't work, because the prison was so heavily fortified. They started to attack us with tear gas. They put tanks and military personnel transport vehicles at the gates of the prison. All the while, over the megaphones, they called to us, "Don't try to get out. Don't try to get out."
NADIA AL-BUKAI All the while, somewhere in his official quarters, I can imagine Bashar al-Assad practising his speech to impress the visiting and absent Arab leaders. If this news got out and his counterparts knew of the riot in the prison, it would be bad publicity for him. He would be perceived as weak. And to Assad and his regime, they cannot be publicly embarrassed. So, he asked his top lieutenants to end this matter as quietly as possible.
And here came another official trick: Act as if you were listening.
DIAB SERRIH We had taken complete control of the prison, two floor of it: the first and the second. The prison is three floors. The prison administration asked us to form a committee from the wise and rational ones among us. They told us, "Let's talk and see what your demands are, so as to resolve the problem peacefully. You didn't get out, so we won't hurt or punish anyone. We want to resolve this problem and turn the page."
So, the prisoners formed a committee of three people. We had a friend in the committee whose name was Nizar Rastanawi.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Please remember that name. Nizar Rastanawi. We will get back to him later.
DIAB SERRIH The committee went down and spoke with the prison director. Of course, there were so many officers there. All kinds of military and intelligence officers.
There was one demand. "We wanted to talk to Bashar al-Assad. We don't want to talk with you or the intelligence. We want to deliver our demands to Bashar al-Assad himself. We want to tell him what's happening to us."
NADIA AL-BUKAI In fact, there was a representative of Bashar al-Assad. His name was Munir Adanov, who would later become the deputy chief of staff of the army and was a close aide to Assad.
Adanov told the committee that Assad was not available at the moment to receive their call. He was welcoming VIPs from around the Arab world for the summit. After that, he scolded Ali Kheir Beik for being responsible for the escalation and ordered him to fulfil all the prisoners' requests.
Their demands were to restart visitations; cease the torture; give them fair trials; the ability to buy clothes, food, and books; and to allow them to do activities. Basically, to make Sednaya less inhumane and more like a normal prison.
DIAB SERRIH And indeed, they implemented all of our demands. Beyond what we could have imagined. They permitted us to bring books. They allowed us to bring food. Everything we wanted, they gave it to us. And more than this, there were some prisoners who did wooden handicrafts, like making prayer beads or picture frames or canes for old people. Imagine, they brought them tools they never would have dreamt of. They even brought them some little sharp tools. Even some kitchen knives.
NADIA AL-BUKAI They gave them more than knives, though. Instead of the old mattresses that prisoners used to sleep on, they gave them military beds, something they would regret later. But I will get to that.
DIAB SERRIH We considered this a victory, but we were cautious that this victory wouldn't last long. The guards didn't fully return. There were some, but a very light presence. They were just bringing food to our doors, and we'd take care of everything else. Even the doors of the cells were not locked on us anymore. Guards were totally out of the equation now. If there was a problem and a guard took a prisoner to solitary confinement, the prisoners would go down and get him back out, saying, "We wouldn't want our comrade to sleep alone."
It happened a few times. It was impossible for the situation to continue like this. It started to feel more like a day-care or a boarding school than a prison. Even boarding schools would have more discipline.
NADIA AL-BUKAI This response was to serve one purpose only: to contain the riot and to avoid any potential embarrassment to Assad during his long-awaited summit. And it did succeed in that. But on the other hand, it was a failure for the regime's men, like the Mukhabarat leaders and Ali Kheir Beik, the now side-lined prison director.
For the impatient regime men, it was time for another favourite move: deception.
For one hundred days after the riot, Sednaya detainees were visited by members of parliament, intelligence officers, religious leaders, and high-ranking bureaucrats. During these visits, there were promises that a security committee would come to study the prisoners' files and that there was a possibility of receiving pardons by July.
On the 4th of July, prison officers and guards circled Sednaya, delivering an important message.
DIAB SERRIH They were asking us, "Please, just close the doors. Tomorrow, the security committee will come and check on the prison. Let's avoid embarrassment for us and for you. It might reflect badly on us all if the committee sees you undisciplined. Just close the doors. And tomorrow, you will meet the committee one by one, and you can say whatever you want to them. But now, be disciplined."
NADIA AL-BUKAI The prisoners complied, and everyone in Sednaya went back to their cells and handed the keys to the guards. Tomorrow was a moment of truth.
The committee was a lie.
On the 5th of July 2008, at dawn, in each cell block in Sednaya's red building, where all the political prisoners were, there were hundreds of armed soldiers. The deception manoeuvre succeeded. Now, they got back to their favourite tactic: violence. Again.
DIAB SERRIH It was a horrific sight. Three hundred soldiers opening the door of each cell and just stomping on people. Stomp, stomp, stomping and breaking bones and beating. A horrific, horrific scene. The voices of people being beaten, their bones breaking by having their legs stomped on. Absolutely terrifying. It was crushing. Literally. They were crushing people.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Because the guards were doing this cell by cell, that gave time for the others locked and trapped waiting for their turn. They felt that this was the day they would die.
DIAB SERRIH The detainees' survival instincts kicked in. We felt they were coming to kill us and we refused to surrender. We were like a pack of wolves or wild animals that have to gather in large numbers to fight back.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Suddenly, something strange happened. A voice would flip the situation completely.
DIAB SERRIH We heard somebody saying, "Break the military beds and use the main bars to break the walls. Gather in one room. Don't let them enter as three hundred with you alone or with just ten inmates."
NADIA AL-BUKAI If you are wondering where this voice came from, the answer is the air duct. The ventilation hatches had been their social media and communication channel all the time. Prisoners would sometimes send stuff through them like a towel, a blanket, or even underwear. But that day, only voices mattered the most.
DIAB SERRIH We could hear other voices from the air ducts. Every four cells shared a ventilation system throughout the prison. And remember, it's three floors. So, the voice came from these air ducts. So, who knows who said that first? But people started to copy it, seeing it as a good idea. So, people throughout the prison were repeating, "Open the walls and get out."
You couldn't say this was planned, because if it was planned by the prisoners, it would have been even more successful.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The prisoners instinctively started to hit the walls and break them.
DIAB SERRIH Guards where in cell one and two. I was in cell four. So, the breaking operation was literally unbelievable. Maybe if somebody listened to us, they would say that this person is lying or exaggerating. But truly, we made a hole in the wall within ten minutes. The wall was penetrated. And the same happened in other cells. And through these holes, we started to jump to the next cell and the next until we reached cell ten.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Now, all the prisoners in the cell block are gathered in one cell.
DIAB SERRIH We were one hundred wolves. Come. Let them enter now.
NADIA AL-BUKAI They didn't even wait for the guards to come to them. They broke the last wall and went out to the block corridor. One hundred desperate, fed up, men, with their survival instinct at its peak, facing around triple the amount of regime soldiers in the corridor.
DIAB SERRIH They were stunned. One hundred people attacking them as if one man. And the detainees had metal bars while they had wooden batons and broken tree branches. Here is where the equation was flipped. There was a battle. And as usual, the midranking officers immediately escaped. Actually, they don't always flee like this. But most of the time, they do. They left the soldiers and fled. The soldier without his leader is lost. He doesn't know what to do. There are no orders. So, at this point, the soldiers, too, became detainees.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The operation Riyad and Diab's cell block undertook was repeated throughout the prison. The prisoners were able to take hostages of high-ranking officers and guards and used the phones of these hostages to call their families, to tell them about what was happening.
The mayhem spread further. Some inmates started fires in different places in the prison to alert the world about what was happening. The smoke was visible to the neighbouring villages.
Other people tried to escape the building. And then, the shooting started. The guards randomly shot live ammunition everywhere and at everyone. After about twelve hours, at around five p.m., the shooting stopped. But the extent of the day's aftermath was huge.
DIAB SERRIH The prison burnt. The bakery was burnt. Some of the storages were in total chaos. The soldiers tried desperately to storm our block, and their attempts failed.
So, around five or six p.m., they started to call us from the megaphones to stop the chaos, saying that, if we did, they would stop firing at us. They said that they had orders from their commanders to stop firing, because they'd like to resolve the situation peacefully. So, let's talk.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The news got to the highest levels of Assad's regime, and they ordered all the military branches to go to Sednaya and stop the situation from escalating. Under no circumstances did they want a word of what was happening to escape.
An iron curtain was imposed on the area. They cut the electricity off in the prison and brought jamming devices, leaving the mobile phones in the hands of the prisoners useless.
Inside the prison, some of the radical Islamist factions used this chaos to create their own courts in parts of the prison. They started to enforce their own version of justice, a vindictive and violent one.
DIAB SERRIH In the prison, there were some Islamists who had a different vision. Some were with al-Qaeda. Some had been volunteer fighters / mujahideen in Iraq. And there was tension between these two radical branches.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Their victims weren't only the guards.
DIAB SERRIH Nizar.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Do you remember Nizar Rastanawi who I mentioned earlier, the one who was part of the first prisoners' delegation to negotiate with Assad's representative?
Nizar was a civil engineer and a prominent human rights activist in Hama city, in central Syria. He was sentenced to four years in prison by the State Security Court after a member of Mukhabarat testified that he overheard a private conversation Nizar was having with another person, "spreading false news" and "insulting the president of the republic."
The term was supposed to be only three years, but Fayez al-Nouri, the same judge who sentenced Riyad and Diab, added an extra year to the sentence. al-Nouri didn't like that Nizar had refused to stand up while hearing the verdict.
At the time of the riot, Nizar was months away from being released from Sednaya.
DIAB SERRIH Nizar was approached by a man I didn't recognise. The man beat him up and insulted him. And then, two other masked people came and took him away. Those people who took him away were very big, athletic men. So, they took him and were beating him along the way. These two people were clearly other prisoners, not guards. Guards wear military uniforms. So, I followed them and tried to rescue him.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Nizar was a known person to most of the prison as a secular and outspoken intellectual. The radical Islamists didn't like him, because of his beliefs.
DIAB SERRIH I tried to demand. "Leave him alone. Why are you taking him?"
At this point, the battle became between me and other prisoners. One of them beat me up, and two other people came and beat me up, too, and threatened me. They had the metal bars with them. They didn't really speak, but it was clear that they wanted me to shut up.
There were another two people who tried to come to help me, to help me rescue him from them. But we couldn't. They attacked us again. They were a big group, around seven or eight people, and we were just three.
NADIA AL-BUKAI They took Nizar downstairs, and Diab followed them to see where they were taking him.
DIAB SERRIH It was a closed block, not an open one. There was a pair of prisoners sort of guarding the block, and they told me, "If you want to follow him, we don't know what will happen to you inside. Go back."
I retreated. But I was still cautious, waiting for the situation to calm down and until these guys might leave, so I could go in and see what happened.
Around two p.m., the place was open again and nobody was there. The prisoners who were guarding the cell block were no longer there. I went inside and I found him lying dead on the floor. He was there with five other prisoners. All had been killed. The other five were believed to be informers among the prisoners.
RIYAD AVLAR The Islamic groups came and they attack me, too, as they tried to kill me, 'cause of my belief somehow different from them
NADIA AL-BUKAI But Riyad wasn't alone. His friends saved him from imminent death.
DIAB SERRIH There was a group of inmates who went down to defend Riyad and stand by him. Some of these people were Salafis as well, honestly, and they told the factions who came to attack Riyad, "If you came to hurt him, you'll have to get through us first." They told them, "The person you are trying to hurt helped us a lot and did us a lot of favours in Adra Prison before he came to Sednaya."
In a way, there were many people who liked and respected us. There were people who knew that we would never hurt them, however bad our disagreements became.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Luckily, Riyad survived. But Nizar and others didn't.
I try to imagine what kind of hate they had for Nizar, what enticed them to do that to him. I went through everything written about him everywhere, trying to understand. And I couldn't find anything.
And I also can't help but think, if the judge, Fayez al-Nouri, hadn't added an additional year to Nizar's sentence, he would have been alive. If the regime hadn't put Nizar in detention in the first place, because of a private conversation, he would have been alive.
RIYAD AVLAR He was a good man and always talking in a low voice and asking for rights. He was a human right defender. And after hours, we heard that they killed him. Why they killed him, I don't know. He was like water: clear. I liked Nizar. They killed him for nothing.
DIAB SERRIH Nizar's killing created a crisis inside the prison, even among the radical Islamists themselves. There were many among the radical Islamists who were against his killing.
NADIA AL-BUKAI In Sednaya Prison, on that day, July 5th, 2008, thirty people were killed. Until this moment, it is said that only perhaps two of the dead bodies were returned by the regime to their families. Nizar was not one of them.
In the early hours of July 6th, 2008, General Talaat Mahfouz picked up his phone. The caller was President Bashar al-Assad himself. Mahfouz was then a military police branch director and, before that, he was the director of Tadmor Prison, the terrible prison I had mentioned at the start of this podcast. The same place that Riyad, as a young man, had described in a letter, leading to his detention for years.
As a loyal son of the regime, Mahfouz knew all the regime's ways, and his choice tactic: division.
DIAB SERRIH The detainees were now in complete control of the prison. They even had their own detainees, around twelve hundred soldiers. And now, the negotiations began between the regime and the committee.
A new committee was formed. The prisoners' committee tried to resolve the situation with no more violence. Enough. We wanted to resolve the situation peacefully and to not return to the same demeaning conditions: verbal abuse, the beating, the torture. Et cetera. A roadmap agreement to resolve the crisis was reached.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The agreement was that the prisoners would give the detained soldiers back. And, in exchange, the regime would reopen the electrical and water supply lines, bring food, and evacuate the wounded. But it didn't hold up, because some detainees didn't trust the regime.
The families of the detainees went directly to Tishreen Military Hospital, in Damascus. When they saw the ambulances and learnt they were carrying injured people from Sednaya, they protested in front of the hospital for a week, demanding to visit the wounded, to check on their loved ones. They couldn't go near the prison due to the entrenchment of all the military forces around it.
The regime responded to the protests by closing the hospital to public access for two weeks.
DIAB SERRIH Some of the detainees who were sent for treatment during the riot were killed at the hospital. There were people who went to the hospital and never came back. That issue raised a great many questions among the prisoners.
"Where are the people who went to the hospital? We want to see the people who were sent to the hospital."
NADIA AL-BUKAI To stop the questions, the prison administration took two people from the prisoners' committee to Tishreen Military Hospital to see the detainees who had been hospitalised.
DIAB SERRIH When these two men from the committee went there, the hospitalised detainees told them, "Don't go back without us, please."
So, they brought the hospitalised detainees back with them. The people who had been hospitalised told us unbelievable, horrifying stories. The torture that they were subjected to in Tishreen Military Hospital was even worse than the torture they faced in Sednaya Prison. They used to piss on their wounds, mocking them. One of the hospitalised prisoners was approached by a doctor or a nurse while he was blindfolded and told that they wanted to put disinfectant on his wounds. Another came and said, "I will put the disinfectant for him," and he pissed on his wound instead, telling him, "This is the best disinfectant. This is the best treatment for these people." And this is just a mild example.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Back to Sednaya again, the hospital crisis increased divisions between the detainees.
RIYAD AVLAR We, I mean, people like me and like Diab, we were between the bullet of the army and the Salafist groups.
DIAB SERRIH It became a state of siege, July to December. Five months in a state of the most brutal type of siege. Sometimes, we drank rainwater during the fall. We'd break the gutters to drink the water from them. Too many detainees got sick and too many detainees were on the brink of losing their minds.
NADIA AL-BUKAI On the 6th of December 2008, the regime had tried to storm the prison and failed. However, Talaat Mahfouz came up with another idea: If you can't get inside the prison, flush the prisoners out. He positioned snipers on cranes and fire engines around the prison, with orders to fire at will whenever they saw a prisoner.
RIYAD AVLAR The army broke outside the wall to see inside the building itself and began to shooting the prisoners from the outside. But we came inside the cells safely, because when you show even a bit of your body, they will shot you immediately.
There was fear. We always waiting a bullet come and kill us, one of us. And, in fact, yes, they killed. I saw.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The shooting was so random. Anyone inside the building that appeared on the snipers' telescope was shot immediately. Whoever got wounded had to be left to die in agony, because there was no kind of medical treatment available.
DIAB SERRIH The pressure was so high. And then, the massacre started. Between the 6th of December and the 26th of December, they killed a hundred prisoners.
We reached the level of thinking, "So, Talaat Mahfouz really succeeded with this."
The prison could have remained steadfast, but the foundations for steadfastness were not there. The foundations were too weak. You couldn't remain steadfast with one spoon of rice per day from the remaining supplies of food.
Many people were not involved with any of the bloodshed. I am a person who was not involved in any of it. I wanted to get out. I wanted to finish with this crisis.
So, the regime indeed succeeded with this policy of breaking our unity and our power. And people gave up, basically.
NADIA AL-BUKAI It was Talaat Mahfouz's moment of victory. He had proved himself to Assad's representative and brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, the head of military intelligence. Shawkat had used to go there to check on the operation and interrogate prisoners. Mahfouz stood proudly while his men spoke over the megaphone, telling the detainees about their surrender terms. "Take your belongings and exit the prison."
All the prisoners complied except for thirty-five people who refused to leave. Everyone started packing their clothes and went out, but Riyad didn't want his clothes.
RIYAD AVLAR I told Diab, "Okay, I will left my clothes and just give me the books. I will take the books with me outside." Two big bags of books.
And then, I came outside, and guard began to search me. He just saw books. He said, "What is this?"
I said, "Books."
"About what?"
"Books."
He said it is forbidden to take books with you.
I said, "Oh, why? I left my clothes inside the prison and I carried the books with me. Why you are forbidding these books?"
He said, "Okay."
NADIA AL-BUKAI Over the course of these events, between March and December 2008, the regime tried repeatedly to put an end to the riots. It also tried to conceal all traces of what happened by circulating Sednaya inmates between prisons. The regime kept shuffling the prisoners for weeks after their surrender, so that it would be hard for anyone to figure out the numbers of the casualties, and the prisoners' count.
RIYAD AVLAR Yeah. I was, in this time, in the – in the white building. And they brought Diab again from the Adra Prison to Sednaya.
DIAB SERRIH When they returned us, there were still thirty-five people who had refused to get out and surrender. So, on January 9, 2009, the regime stormed the prison and killed them all.
NADIA AL-BUKAI The regime worked on Sednaya's renewal twenty-four-seven. Repairs, demolition, and rebuilding. There was no such thing as sleep. The objective was to reshape Sednaya forever.
After three months, they completed their work. They created the dark abyss that is Sednaya today.
DIAB SERRIH It was a terrifying sight. The walls had become metal, and it's as if you are being imprisoned in a tin of sardines. This is the most accurate description of the cells of Sednaya at that point. The design was so unique. Even the air ducts had been closed off. It's death. It's death.
And some people really immediately got sick. Some people got tuberculosis. Some people got hepatitis. We weren't seeing the sun. We were totally locked down all the time. And after a while, from time to time, they would allow external visits.
NADIA AL-BUKAI They made the visits so short and so random that no one could track the real tally of what had happened during the first and second riot. Talaat Mahfouz vowed that what happened before shall not happen again.
Until now, no one knows the true number of people killed in the riots. No one was held accountable for what happened in Sednaya between March 2008 and January 2009.
DIAB SERRIH We were sure, if we made it out alive from this prison, may God watch over the people who came after us in what they were about to go through.
So, I was grateful for the presence of Riyad and other friends. I mean, who knows who would make it out alive, frankly? There was a general feeling that we all could die anytime those days. And it was a big possibility. I think we all felt the same way. So, for instance, it was a good thing that there was Riyad to inform my family if anything happened to me, to comfort them and speak with them, and the same thing for me.
NADIA AL-BUKAI Assad used the playbook and got away with what he did to the prisoners in Sednaya in 2008. His regime did not tolerate the prisoners' demands for humane treatment. And when the dust settled, the regime blamed them for everything.
Assad controlled the narrative as he worked to improve his relations with the West. In fact, three US Senators, including John Kerry, met with Assad one month after the brutal end of the riot, in February 2009.
Assad, had blocked all forms of independent reporting on the events, stonewalled his men from accountability, and exported a story that he was "a power broker in the region who's fighting extremism," "a pillar of safety and stability in the region, who's fighting terrorism."
Today, some countries are restoring ties with Assad and even consider him as part of the solution. But looking at what continues to happen in my home country, this could not be further from truth. Assad is not a pillar of safety and stability. No one I know feels safe.
Next week on Behind the Sun, we will continue with Diab and Riyad's story and find out how Assad used Sednaya again to try to crush the revolution in 2011. You will meet Ghufran and hear about her journey searching for her missing brothers.
Behind the Sun is a co-production of Message Heard and The Syria Campaign, in collaboration with ADMSP and the Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre, as part of its On the Margins No More project. It's written and produced by Muhammad Farouk.
Thank you to Ranim, Ola, Sara, and Ruairi from The Syria Campaign and to Rahaf from ADMSP for helping put this series together.
Additional production support from Molly Freeman and Tom Biddle. Sandra Ferrari is the executive producer. Theme music is by Milo Evans. My name is Nadia al-Bukai.
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