Saydnaya prison survivors' association urges caution
David Gritten
BBC News
Image source,..... US STATE DEPARTMENT
In 2017, The US identified what it said was a possible crematorium at Saydnaya prison, Syria.
Pro-opposition Aleppo Today TV is citing the Turkey-based Association of Detainees and The Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP), external as urging caution about the reports about Saydnaya prison - where thousands of opposition supporters are said to have been tortured and executed.
The association reportedly said that no rebel factions were besieging the prison and warned relatives of detainees to be careful about approaching it themselves because there are anti-tank and anti-personnel minefields.
In a 2022 report, ADMSP said Saydnaya prison “effectively became a death camp” after the start of the civil war, external.
It estimated that more than 30,000 detainees had either been executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation at the facility between 2011 and 2018. It also cited released inmates as saying that at least another 500 detainees had been executed between 2018 and 2021.
ADMSP also described how “salt chambers” were constructed to serve as primitive mortuaries to store bodies before they were transferred to Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus for registration and burial in graves on military land. The detainees’ families were never given their bodies, it said.