Sednaya Prison

Sednaya Prison (Arabic: سجن صيدنايا, romanized: Sijn Ṣaydnāyā), also known as "Human Slaughterhouse" (المسلخ البشري), was a military prison and death camp in the north of Damascus, Syria, (in the Middle East) operated by Ba'athist Syria under Hafez Al-Assad and his son Bashar. Those imprisoned included civilian detainees, anti-government rebels, and political prisoners. In January 2021, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated that 30,000 detainees were killed by the Assad regime in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment, and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Sednaya between September 2011 and December 2015."

On 8 December 2024, the prison was taken over by rebel forces as they advanced into Damascus. The prison administration agreed to surrender the prison to the rebel forces in exchange for their safe withdrawal. Following the takeover, the remaining inmates in the "white" building of Sednaya prison were released; rebel forces took several extra days to break into and free inmates from the larger "red" building in the prison.

After the prison was captured in 2024, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham published a list of escaped prison staff, who are now among the most wanted fugitives in Syria, second only to members of the Assad family.