'' Scariest prison on Earth ''. Saidnaya prison horrors, of Bashar al-Assad

Saidnaya prison was one of the places where journalists were denied access.

Former prisoners, along with a group of architects, have created a detailed model of the torture house of the president of Syria.

Samer al-Ahmed, a former prisoner, remembers the small hatch on his cell door because he was frequently forced to stick his head through it. Guardian press his neck edge flap, then jumped on his head with his weight, until blood began to drip on the floor.

This is one of the torture methods used in the military prison of Saidnaya, the most famous prison in Syria. Until now, the complex was hidden but a team of architects has created an interactive model as part of the Amnesty International to raise awareness of the hidden stories of the brutal regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The prison is located 25 kilometers north of Damascus, near Saidnaya monastery, where Christians and Muslims have prayed for centuries.

 The new report was released following the death of 17 723 people were in custody Syria since the beginning of the riots in March 2011.

,, When I built the model, I realized that the place is not just incarceration, supervision and torture. The building itself is an architectural instrument of torture, '' said Eyal Weizman director of Forensic Architecture.

To create a clear picture of the prison, the team behind the project Amnesty has interviewed former detainees at the prison Saidnaya, who escaped ganite going to Turkey. Architecture ,, is the path of memories, '' said Weizman. ,, While viewing digital model, witnesses remembered events, obscure, violent and traumatic, '' he added.


Prisoners were constantly blindfolded and forced to kneel, when the guards entered the cell, the prisoners had to cover their eyes so they had to rely on hearing. To determine cell size, the stairs and corridors, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, sound artist, used certain reverberations. ,, Like a sonar sound to light the space around them, '' said Abu Hamdan. Prison is a prison ,, echo, if a person is tortured east like all would be tortured because sound travels through space through drain pipes or vent, '' he added.

Lack of vision and made prisoners to develop their auditory sensitivity, they could distinguish the sound of a belt of an electric cable on the skin, they knew when a man is stabbed, hit the wall were struck.

Another detail is terrifying initiation ceremony,, '' they were taken from a refrigerated truck that were brought to jail beaten with iron rods and cables, generally women were raped.


Two prisoners, and Ahmed Abdou, were held in the first months in a cell of 2.35 meters which sometimes were held and 15 people. They remember that there were many days in a row where there was water and had to drink from the toilet bowl.

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Source: The Guardian