All language subtitles for Surviving.Syrias.Prisons.2025.1080p.WEB.H264-iND22

This programme contains scenes
of graphic images

and testimony which some viewers
may find disturbing from the start

INTERVIEWER:

MAN LAUGHS WRYLY

NEWSREADER: Reports say that
President Bashar al-Assad

has left Damascus by plane.

The family that ruled Syria
so brutally for more than 50 years

has been brought down in 11 days.

Thousands of people
celebrated in the main square,

chanting "Freedom",
seemingly bringing to an end

the civil war that's lasted
13 brutal years.

Scenes like this would have been
unthinkable just one week ago.

The rebels got rid of the regime.

Now, it's time to free the people
who had been detained by it.

Four days after the fall
of Bashar al-Assad,

we went with Shadi Haroun
and his younger brother, Hadi,

to Saydnaya Prison, where they were
once detained and tortured.

Families of the disappeared
were making the same journey,

searching for their loved ones.

After almost a decade as prisoners,

the brothers are now working
with a human rights organisation

to gather evidence of crimes
committed by the Assad regime.

REPORTER: The demand for political
change that started in Tunisia

has now reached Syria...

...which has seen
unprecedented challenges

to the ten-year rule
of President Al-Assad.

The anti-government demonstrations
are getting bigger,

and they're spreading.

Some of the demonstrators have been
openly calling for revolution.

When Syria's uprising began, Shadi
and his brother joined the protests,

and within a month, they were
organising them in their home town.

RAPID GUNFIRE

On that day,

Assad's security forces killed
more than a hundred protestors,

and arrested thousands
across the country.

Shadi was one of them.

He says he was taken to
what looked like a normal house

in a residential neighbourhood
in Damascus,

but inside was an interrogation
centre run by Syrian Intelligence.

Colonel Zain was a high-ranking
Air Force Intelligence officer

when the uprising began.

He's one of 40 former regime
officials, of various ranks,

we tracked down
across a dozen countries.

We verified their identities
by examining military IDs

and other documents,
and cross-referencing their accounts

with those of other insiders
and former prisoners.

Many of them spoke to us
before the fall of Assad,

and feared reprisals
from both sides.

Some have given testimony
to human rights groups,

or courts investigating war crimes.

We agreed to conceal
their identities

and change their names,

given the value
of their first-hand accounts

about the abuses carried out
by the Assad regime.

For decades,
Syria's intelligence agencies

were seen as pillars
that upheld the state.

The country had four of them.

The most powerful and prestigious

was created by Bashar Al-Assad's
father, Hafez.

It was known
as Air Force Intelligence.

Sergeant Omar was another
Air Force Intelligence officer.

He defected about a year after
the uprising began

and ultimately switched sides
and fought against the regime.

Shadi had been missing for weeks,

so the family paid a middleman
to find out where he was detained.

Regime officials were known to take
bribes for this kind of information.

Major Riyad was an officer
in the Syrian Air Force

who says he was assigned
to Air Force Intelligence

when the uprising began.

APPLAUSE

Around two months into the uprising,

President Assad tried
to defuse the protests

by meeting with communities
across Syria,

including Shadi's neighbourhood.

APPLAUSE

Hadi was in a delegation
that met President Assad,

and he asked for the release
of his brother.

He says the President agreed,

and he was sent to see the head
of Air Force Intelligence,

Major General Jamil Hassan.

It's December 2024,
soon after the fall of Assad.

Shadi's heading to an Air Force
Intelligence facility

called Mezzeh Investigations Branch.

Located on an air base,

this was one of the regime's
most notorious detention sites.

Shadi's looking for information
about those who are still missing.

Although prisoners' identities
were being hidden

from the public and other detainees,

meticulous records were kept about
who was being held and where.

The detainees' files are a trove
of potential evidence

for Shadi and his organisation.

But they're in disarray,
and many have been destroyed.

So, this said, like,
"The number of this body is 10,002."

This is one person.

And this is the story
of this person.

No name.

HE SIGHS

In May 2011,
Shadi was transferred here,

to Mezzeh Investigations Branch.

Shadi says he refused to confess.

And eventually, he was presented

to Air Force Intelligence head
Jamil Hassan.

The general ordered him to stop
protesting and sent him home.

A few weeks after
Shadi got out of prison,

he began organising protests again.

This time, he took on
a more prominent role.

SHOUTING

Nine months into the uprising,

thousands of protestors
had been arrested,

and an estimated 3,000
had been killed.

LOUD BANG

Facing international criticism,

President Assad
went on US television

and tried to distance himself from
the actions of the security forces.

BARBARA WALTERS: Do you think that
your forces crack down too hard?

They are not my forces.

They are... Military forces
belong to the government.

OK, but you're the government.
I don't own them. I'm president.

OK. I don't own the country,

so they're not my forces.
No, but you have to give the order.

No, no, no, we...
In the constitution, in the law,

the mission of the institution,
to protect the people,

to stand against any chaos
or any... terrorists.

CRYING IN BACKGROUND

The former security officials
we spoke to

said they would round people up
from where they lived, worked

or even prayed.

But the demonstrations
continued to grow,

as did the regime's wanted list.

In December 2011, the brothers say
they were taken to Harasta,

an Air Force Intelligence branch
on the outskirts of Damascus.

Colonel Zain was second in command
there at the time.

Warrant Officer Abbas told us
about his first day of training

at Air Force Intelligence,
as a young recruit.

CHILDREN CHANTING

Before joining the military,
Hussam grew up

in a rural part of Syria
where opportunities were scarce.

He told us that he and
his classmates were taught that

the Assads and their Ba'ath Party
were the saviours of Syria.

Over the course of the war,

Saydnaya became the most infamous
of Syria's prisons.

Warrant Officer Osama
was the Chief of Staff

to the head of Saydnaya Prison.

By April 2012, Shadi and Hadi
had been detained

by Air Force Intelligence
for four months.

Inmates were quickly and secretly
convicted in military field courts,

with no lawyers or right to appeal.

The trials often ended
with death sentences,

signed off by Syria's
highest religious leader,

and by either
the Minister of Defence

or the Army's Chief of Staff,

who acted on behalf of
President Assad.

Do you know what goes on in that
prison? Have you been there?

No, I haven't been. I've been
in the presidential palace,

not at the prison.
ASSAD CHUCKLES

First of all,
execution is part of the Syrian law.

If the Syrian Government
or institution wants to do it,

they can make it legally,
because it's been there for decades.

Secret trials? No lawyers?

Why do they need it,
if they can make it legally?

An investigation by Amnesty
International found that,

in the first four years
of the uprising,

up to 13,000 detainees were executed
in Saydnaya Prison.

The bodies of executed detainees,

along with those who died
from torture or disease,

were taken to military hospitals,
where their deaths were registered.

Officer "Kamal" was an army nurse
who worked in a hospital morgue

until the final days of the regime.

His description matches
a trove of photographs

smuggled out of Syria in 2013

that show nearly 7,000 detainees
who died in government custody.

Over a hundred detainee
death certificates we reviewed

showed the same cause of death,

"heart and respiratory failure",

even in cases where we found
evidence the inmates were tortured.

By 2019, Assad's forces
had largely put down the uprising.

Shadi and Hadi had spent
almost a decade

transferred from prison to prison,
and were back at Saydnaya.

One day that summer, they were
summoned to see a judge.

SHADI SIGHS

After his release,
Shadi went into exile in Turkey.

In 2021, the brothers joined
a Syrian human rights organisation,

the Association of Detainees and
Missing Persons in Saydnaya Prison.

PHONE RINGS

PHONE RINGS

ON PHONE:

NEW CALL:

NEW CALL:

NEW CALL:

NEW CALL:

Yusuf worked for the City of
Damascus as a bulldozer driver.

He has agreed to use his real name.

He says that a few months
into the uprising,

an intelligence officer ordered him
to take his bulldozer

to Najha cemetery
on the outskirts of the city.

Officer Kamal told us
the dead bodies were piling up

in the morgue at the military
hospital where he worked.

He says that security forces
took him

and some of his colleagues
to several locations,

including Najha cemetery.

We've been told
by human rights investigators

that there are around 130 suspected
mass graves across parts of Syria

once controlled by the regime,

and new ones are still being found.

Officer Kamal gave us the location
of a previously unknown site

in an area called Maaloula,
in a military zone outside Damascus.

He says he went there once in 2014.

We've obtained satellite imagery
of the location

and had it independently analysed.

This is what it looked like
before the protests began,

and this image from 2012 shows
that several large pits appeared

in the first 18 months
of the uprising,

and that one of those pits
was filled in by 2016.

We also spoke to a truck driver
who told us he went there every week

for eight months
and transported over 3,000 bodies.

With so many suspected
gravesites across Syria,

it could take years
to investigate them all.

Hussam, the prison guard,

defected at the end of 2012
and fled Syria.

Colonel Zain, second in command at
Harasta Intelligence Branch,

has been living in hiding
since leaving Syria.

In 2013, Osama's boss,
the head of Saydnaya Prison,

was captured
and killed by Syrian rebels.

Shortly afterwards,
Osama fled the country.

Officer Kamal is still in Syria.

Four of his former colleagues,

as well as multiple detainees,
accuse him of abusing prisoners.

He denies this.

CLAPPING AND CHANTING