I Investigated Assad's Torture Prison ( Hell On Earth )
00:00 for years Syrian refugees were bringing personal stories out of their country of Assad's prisons and torture centers where people spent years without charge being treated worse than animals in horrendous conditions places such as the infamous sadn where torture and execution was
00:17 common place but with the Assad regime finally now gone I headed to the country once again to investigate these notorious institutions for myself joining the people searching for lost loved ones and hearing the stories of those who personally suffered in one of the darkest chapters in human history
00:36 join me we're trying to get permission to get inside well possibly the most notorious building for the Syrian people in the entirety of the country it's called Palestine Branch let's see Benjamin this is the most
01:03 notorious Branch security of course there are a lot of security branches and every branch has its own prison and its own you know everything Kingdom Empire but this one was the most notorious because uh I mean just saying Palestine branch is very intimidating or was very intimidating for the Syrian people never
01:27 thought that there would be a time where Syria is liberated and you could really walk yeah uh into these branches as a visitor to see the atrocities with a sense of Freedom you know never thought about this never just two weeks ago this would have been unimaginable for you ex just two weeks ago and for 54 years of
01:50 Tyran you know Tyrant regime you could never think that this moment is going to happen but now it is and now it is and look what's been left what are these things books names look information logging details people who visited maybe
02:13 look wow remnants of the Fallen regime and there it is in front of us Palestine Branch I'm looking wow look at this this was the old sleeping quarters for the guards here I suppose look the old bunk beds clothes Left Behind Army
02:43 fatigues they ran away in a hurry the Syrian Army and so didn't even take their jackets with them wow look Army caps just discarded oh my God look at it everything just left all these Bits of Paper books
03:11 [Applause] registers torn out and discarded the names of people that came in here and many that just didn't leave once you were logged into this place you were lucky if you escape look at it oh God has a kind of an evil vibe maybe even this building look at it yeah
03:31 horrible Place very scary these strange things just discarded like why did they have that why do they have a gas mask I have no idea to be honest was that like for torture terrible things were done here now there just some cats living here the old is that the new flag the old flag
03:48 the old flag that's the old flag this that would have been that would have been on a desk before a torturer desk this really is the um s 21 if you remember my Cambodia video of Syria just left behind
04:12 everything look Underpants still left drying that's how quickly they ran away the people who thought they'd be in power forever just ran away this is actually a document it says that uh it is about limiting the number of uh committing suicide among soldiers
04:43 oh my God take to take measures to limit this phenomenon wow so even though you work for the regime a lot of them were kind of forced into this life it wasn't that they dreamed of coming here and being part of the army a lot of people had no choice
05:05 of course and this document trying to stop people or soldiers I should say from committing suicide proves that basically yes especially that like for example a soldier in in the Army let's say it takes used to take like $7 us which is ridiculous a month a month yeah and and you know they have they are
05:24 forced 100% they are forced to do this job there was such a cult of personality look just an entrance to a building we've got Assad Assad Assad another one of Assad over there we've got another picture on the side here of Bashar al- Assad ripped of course another one of Assad here more of Assad up
05:47 here just trying to convince the people that he was the rightful leader of Syria look but it's obvious by what they've done to these pictures that the people didn't agree with him oh my God Ramy look here please look here the pictures that were taken of the prisoners oh my God look at this look
06:15 what we found we found pictures of detainees that were arrested and brought here look they took a photo of everyone just like we saw in Cambodia in S21 t slang prison the same thing happened here look these people people imagine how scared they were oh my God are these names underneath the GRE yes their names
06:35 and so then here underneath they have the name what was the name of this girl can you tell me the name njla njla n so njla hopefully njla survived and came out okay but who knows careful God these are probably the cells Ramy look with the chains on the door
07:08 still this is it look graffiti by the prisoners on the wall look these are the cells where probably like 20 30 40 people were packed into waiting for whatever their fate was in this room look you know a lot of people are
07:31 squeezed in one room yes I can imagine yeah look these are the mattresses on the floor if you can call the mattresses personal possessions look medicines clothes little feeding cups and over here for all the people was the toilet oh my God what terrible
07:55 conditions these poor people had to live in a little tap all down here in these rooms and graffiti by the prisoners all over the wall some dates probably names cities they came from some of the people here would have been here a long long time they didn't
08:14 come for a day or two you can tell that but amount of possessions they had some people would have been here for months maybe years I don't know look drying their clothes personal possessions everywhere oh terrible terrible things happened [Music]
08:39 here look some prison pictures art on the walls messages oh my God have I found someone who was in present inside are you serious one of the cells he was looking for the uh cell number 14 did he find it
09:01 no not yet not yet we should look wow we found someone who served time in this prison in cell number 14 oh this is this is his cell oh my god let's have a look this was his so this is his uh his his space you know y he he counted yeah 1 2 3 4 5 six
09:30 he remember he remember the square how long was he in here for four months and how do they treat very bad condition very bad you are not being dealt with as an a human you are being dealt with as an animal does it still affect him to this day he came here actually to treat his
10:00 trauma I can imagine I can imagine so whenever uh when he was in the prison Whenever there was some of the guards knocking on the door he would be scared so this happened to him even when he was liberated and he went back home so he came to treat this Trum well tell him my hope that it helps him
10:31 here they used to put like 100 prisoners in the same time in the same cell W all crushed in together in [Music] here every day maybe two three people will lose life oh my God life when when when they are four or five dead bodies they remove them other
11:00 than this two three they leave them so he was in the room with dead bod sometimes yeah sometimes he said sometimes there will be dead bodies with us oh my God oh God terrible The Prisoner here is not a prisoner he is a number his number was 25 he remembers wow how could he
11:23 forget 100 people here in this black dark cell dead body amongst you as he said the guards didn't pull the bodies out to those four or five what a terrifying terrifying ordal I spent two days in a Russian prison and I'll be honest with you I was terrified imagine spending months here surrounded by death
11:42 hearing the screams absolutely disgusting what happened to these people good morning from day two here in the new Syria now we're about to go and visit a prison which was the largest prison under Assad's regime W Sadia and we're going with a couple of friends who unfortunately lost parents to Assad's
12:10 regime disappeared into the prison system so um let's jump in a car with them and Ramy and go to the prison oh sorry sorry that noise was perfect sorry for the inconvenience not at all good morning Ry good morning everybody good morning are you ready to go to sdai
12:33 prison yes come on then let's go ready let's go let's go let's go let's go we're just discussing in the car just how intimidating it was living in Syria under the Assad regime because just like in the Soviet Union back in the 1950s or 40s or 30s under Stalin people could report you for crimes that you hadn't
12:53 committed maybe through personal jealousy or rivalry wanting the job you had or the apartment even the wife you had maybe and people would report you to Security Service accuse you of some fictitious crime being a spy for Israel or something and then your whole life would be changed as you tried for years
13:09 to prove your innocence but um that was a very difficult thing to do so yeah everyone was intimidated by what could happen because everyone had a story just like our friends in the back of the car had a story of either someone very close to them who disappeared or someone that they knew who disappeared and um that's
13:25 a terrifying Prospect to live under so let's go now to the prison and um yeah take a look around so behind the razor wire there's a massive complex on the hill and that is saah prison the largest prison in Syria up down the hill we won't forget we won't forget
13:59 we going in WoW Jad just judging by all the military vehicles and tanks that were passing on the road up to the prison you can see how important it was to the regime um because it's just military hardware abandoned all along this road and just imagine now as we can see the
14:20 prison rise up on top of the hill in front of us how terrified people would have been traveling up this road everyone in Syria knew the name s prison so imagine have being arrested being in a van and then seeing this your future in front of you yeah ramy's car makes a rather
14:46 interesting noise ramy's car whenever we arrive goes for some reason anyway it's a scary it's a scary place it's a Scary Place it's still a bit scary now even though yeah everything's changed it's still a bit scary just coming here just strange
15:07 scenes things being strewn out prisoners clothing everywhere and different things blankets old metal beds just burned by the side here look and up here on the gate no doubt these are pictures of the people who disappeared the many hundreds of thousands of people
15:28 who dis disappeared into Assad's prison system never to be seen again look here with telephone numbers look this one's just a child and telephone numbers to call the number if you find out any information about these people look at this one look call these numbers wow terrible there's no
15:47 information people don't know they lost relatives fathers Ham's father disappeared he never found out any information never found out what prison he was in what happened to him but here we have look some of the many many many tens of thousands of people who disappeared in the prison
16:05 system just parts of parts of prisoners just left behind just so it was a huge operation here cuz there were many many thousands of people here maybe 20,000 people here in subai prison so of course you had to C for them in some way and so these are the kitchens the cookers are over
16:35 here you can feel bad energy here yeah you feel bad energy here it's like even choosing the place to be in Sid Sid is known for its harsh weather you know right so you can see the cold it's really harsh dry cold so this is to add another layer of intimidation or terrorism to terrify the prisoners yeah
16:57 a so uh you can see a lot of bers are thrown everywhere and Hamza and man are just trying to find any Trace back to their fathers but I think it's really impossible mission yeah it's like a need in a Hast stack but Hamza Mana they haven't seen their fathers for well God
17:20 knows how many years so every time they find a piece of paper they just hoping that they could find something a little bit of information a picture or some idea of the whereabouts of their fathers they are actually they have a lot of M people they are trying to find in this uh these papers they said this
17:42 second time we come we we we don't want to lose hope you know we want to keep searching to find any Trace back to yeah so there are thousands of people across this nation of Syria that are just looking at papers that they're finding files that they're finding in these now abandoned
18:02 buildings um just hoping to find something hoping against hope really because how would you ever be lucky enough to find that little bit of paper that little clue to The Disappearance of a family member here amongst all the discarded rubbish here we have the processing room
18:24 where the prisoners first arrived and they were locked inside these cages locked inside these cages these narrow cages maybe I don't know 20 30 people in here waiting to be processed brought out and then taken up to their cells row after row of cage look all on the other side as
18:50 well and then they'd be led from these metal cages up the steps to the actual prison [Applause] itself and here just like we saw yesterday in Palestine Branch we have the sales look full of personal belongings still the
19:21 blankets packets of food personal possessions you can imagine what a relief it was when this prison was liberated the guards ran away and the people that were in here basically waiting to die at some point were liberated by the new government and freed from these
19:44 cells look wow Ramy there wasn't even any light in these cells look everything was just closed up when that door closed you're in the darkness even the light the light nothing no fresh air and just the possessions everywhere
20:01 drawing their towels and trousers some of the people would have been in here for years years and years and years here in this in a Cell just like this look imagine she has her son uh missed 13 years ago and she's looking and looking she keeps hoping to find someone yeah but unfortunately yeah she can't find
20:26 any Trace no Trace at all yeah know yeah some people said that he is inside NAA but actually she used to come every like every month once right to to check to see if someone will lead her her to him but unfortunately yeah but now she's just looking and hoping to find something she hope to find any
20:49 Trace but nothing inshah CH good luck yeah so um Syria is just full of those stories like that crying lady there lost sons that lady lost her son she said has no idea what happened to him just knew that he was here in this prison but no news imagine that losing a
21:17 child knowing that's the thing isn't it knowing what he suffered because everyone who was here in said they suffered in rooms like this so he has like five missing people from 2012 nobody appeared they all vanished it's a common story in Syria a common story I think what makes the horrors of
21:57 satna so viscer and real is that everything's still here unlike in other places we've been whether that be Paul pot's Torture Museum in Cambodia or the Russian goolag idar means torture chamber all the possessions of the prisoners are still here so you have that real that feeling of what really
22:15 took place here it's still very much alive I mean look the food bags are still here people's personal items their clothes packets of cigarettes it's so close still to what happened just well this prison was liberated what 3 weeks ago that you can still really
22:38 feel it the horrors that went on here oh it's got a nasty atmosphere it really has look at this the prison's clothes discarded prison uniforms someone wore that maybe they wore that for years locked in this cell without any fresh air or sunlight hardly any hope of
23:04 Escape so up here is the old hangman's noose you see it here on that bit of red rope right here at the back of the prisoners where they brought prisoners out and executed them from here and this was the suit that they were executing in these
23:22 orange jackets what they're executing for some reason I don't know why they chose that but here was along here on these bits of metal sticking out up to 30 people a week were executed they're saying from this prison around the back door then just hung here against a bit of
23:48 concrete well as vile as a place like sedia prison is we must remember that around the world still many such places still operating where people are detained on trumped up political charges and face well very precarious Futures this one may be gone but plenty more need to be opened let's get out of
24:20 here well it's Friday and everyone's going to the main Square to celebrate it seems half of Damascus has come to the very center omay Yad Square to celebrate what will be a new beginning for them so a lot of the soldiers that you're seeing behind me have come
24:53 fighting battles in the north of the country fought in Aleppo fought in homes and now they're here in Damascus the new rulers of Syria let's see what future they decide to build for [Music] Syria for 54 years we have we had one
25:24 regime one point of view is governing Syria now there is a new chapter of Syria a new chapter of Syria and here is a new chapter coming that's our new chapter here they come look at the new chapter not a very healthy chapter but uh a new chapter that's the new chapter my
25:45 God so the guys that you're seeing walk around with the machine guns are members of HTS which is basically the group that took control of Syria and then the hope is that HTS is willing to share power and give Democratic elections to the Syrian people that's the hope we'll see they say they're going to do it who
26:04 knows now but um hopefully that's going to happen over the next few months cuz that's what the people here on omad Square would like a democratic Syria Democratic Syria Democratic Sy well unfortunately that's all we got time for it's just a quick trip a quick trip to Syria Ramy find words from you
26:29 my friend what do you want to say well actually uh we are looking forward to a new Syria a free Syria a democratic Syria where all the syrians are involved in this process and for the tourists I invite everybody to come to Syria now is the best time to come to watch all these celebrations the Syrian people are
26:46 really happy because this is actually a very important event it's like uh moving to a new chapter uh we are ending a very long chapter full of suffering and now we have a new Syria so I invite everybody to come maybe this is the best time to see the new Syria the best time to come to a new Syria so let's see what
27:07 the future holds no one knows quite yet what the future holds but it's going to be better than the past I hope so cheers once again see you once again thank you and uh see you guys next time some other place goodbye from a new free hopefully Democratic Syria hopefully hopefully bye-bye bye-bye
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