Former prisoner at Saydnaya prison in Syria recalls inhumane treatment
During Syria's civil war, human rights groups estimate that more than 100,000 Syrians, including children, were held in appalling conditions at Syrian President Bashar Assad's notorious Saydnaya prison.
The Saydnaya prison, in the capital, is infamous for holding thousands of people and has been described as a "human slaughterhouse" by Amnesty International.
Omar Alshogre, a former inmate at Saydnaya prison, told ABC News that the facility "is known to have women" and that he has heard that detainees there have experienced sexual abuse.
ABC News interviewed Alshogre as he described his time as a prisoner at Saydnaya and explained the inhumane treatment he endured.
ABC NEWS: Here now is someone who knows firsthand about Saydnaya prison and its inhumane conditions. Omar Alshogre is with us now. Thank you so much for joining us. I know you were just 15 years old when you were first captured by Bashar Assad's forces. How did you end up in the prison there?
OMAR ALSHOGRE: I ended up in prison without a reason in Syria. That's, that's the interesting question in Syria. You don't need to do anything to end up being political prisoner. They just take from the street. They take you from your home. At the checkpoint if the guard doesn't like, if the soldier, doesn't like your hair, he could just beat you up and then put you in prison because they know they have immunity.
They can't be prosecuted for their crimes. So I was taken from my home with my cousin and we were taken to prison. And then we were forced to give false confessions under torture. Those false confessions ended up leading to an execution sentence from which I was smuggled.
ABC NEWS: Tell us about the conditions that you endured.
ALSHOGRE: As you can see in their released videos and photos from Saydnaya prison, it's a slaughterhouse. It's dark place where you rarely dream of getting free out of that place. Or I would say never dream of getting out of that place. You have multiple floors and multiple guards with different expertise on which is in which way they want to torture you and what is the best way for them to enjoy torturing you.
ABC NEWS: Give us a sense of that moment of freedom, what you felt. What happened?
ALSHOGRE: My moment of freedom or the moment of freedom for hundreds of thousands of Syrian prisoners the other day?
ABC NEWS: Uh, the for the hundreds of thousands and for you personally.
ALSHOGRE: I'll start with 100,000. I was here in this apartment watching the news one after one, and I was crying during the night because I've been seeing videos of people in other cities being liberated from prison. So excited for every Syrian to feel the feeling of freedom that I once felt. It was incredible. I was so worried that the regime will execute a lot of prisoners when the opposition take over new areas.
But luckily, I think not a lot of that has happened. And I see the people running. Imagine prisoners, after 14 years, some of them after 43 years of imprisonment, were running free for the first time. The world didn't know they even exist anymore. So that was an extraordinary moment. It's the day I will always remember, and that's what I worked for in the last nine, ten years.
So it brings me endless joy. And in regards to the day I experienced freedom, it didn't felt as as good since I was informed that I was taken to execution and I was put in room for 48 hours for preparation. And every hour they will open the small window of the door and ask me, 'How do you want us to kill you?' And they put you through a traumatic experience.
And then 48 hours later, they took me and they put me on the ground and they loaded, aimed and shot. And when they shot, I thought I died because I never died before. And I don't know how it feels to die. After three years and in a car stopped behind me, pick me up, took me somewhere else. Somewhere else. Somewhere else. Things were moving too quickly.
Then I was in-between my mother's hands and my mom told me that it was a mock execution and she bribed everyone from the top to the bottom. Even the execution guards were bribed to not shoot.
ABC NEWS: Do you think anything will change under a new government with the prison system and beyond?
ALSHOGRE: I think everything will change. Syria has been out on the street fighting with their lives. They struggled. They were tortured, starved, died, chemical weapons rained on them. For them to achieve this day of freedom, Syrians will not let anyone who doesn't fit be in power, regardless of who liberated Syria in the last week. It doesn't matter.
What matters is that we are willing to continue our fight to have a democratic process to end up with election. Democracies around the world have let us down day after day after day. They let us die in silence. They did nothing. Not from the great America, not to Sweden, nowhere in the world have done anything to help the Syrian people achieve freedom and democracy. Syrians have done it themselves and they will fight to have it and to keep it.
ABC NEWS: Omar, we can hear your passion and excitement and we thank you so much. We are fortunate to be able to have this conversation with you tonight. Thank you for your time.
ALSHOGRE: Thank you.
