LONDON

Philip Luther, a senior research advisor at Amnesty International, has described Anadolu’s footage from Sednaya Prison in Syria as an "important piece of evidence," reinforcing the organization’s previous claims and findings about atrocities committed under the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime.

The footage, which provides rare insight into one of Syria’s most notorious prisons, confirms allegations of systematic human rights abuses and war crimes reported by Amnesty in 2016 and 2017.

Sednaya Prison, controlled by regime’s defense ministry, has long symbolized the widespread torture and execution practices of the Assad regime.

Amnesty’s 2017 report Human Slaughterhouse detailed systematic killings and torture at Sednaya as part of attacks on Syria’s civilian population. The report concluded that such crimes were part of state policy and amounted to crimes against humanity.

Anadolu footage exposes execution room

Anadolu's Deputy Director General and Editor-in-Chief Yusuf Ozhan and his team examined Sednaya Prison, relying on leaked information and diagrams from human rights organizations. Their investigation led them to the infamous execution room in the white building, identified in international reports.

The team accessed the site through a burned-out door in the building’s southeastern courtyard and descended steps into a room described in earlier diagrams. The prison layout matched those sketches, including two elevated platforms and staircases reportedly used for hangings.

Amnesty International’s 2017 findings revealed that executioners would pull on prisoners’ bodies to accelerate death by breaking their necks, a chilling detail confirmed by Anadolu’s footage.

Interviews with detainees, use of 3D modelling, satellite images

Luther, who supervised the research for Amnesty’s Sednaya Prison report published in 2017, spoke about the report and new elements revealed by the images recently published by Anadolu.

He said in the process of preparing the report, they first consulted the testimonies of former detainees but realized that there was "something unusual" in the prison.

He said the torture was not very different from other detention centers in Syria but that it was extraordinarily difficult to find former detainees who had survived in Sednaya.

After talking with detainees, he said they "realized that there were reports of people not being able to leave the prison because they were transferred to another part of the prison from the so-called red building to the so-called white building and reports of mass executions there."

In addition to interviews with former prison officials, a medical worker who entered the prison and a judge involved in sentencing prisoners to death, other methods such as technological tools including satellite images and 3D modeling were also used during the preparation of the report.

"We spent a lot of time gathering satellite imagery of the prison and the immediate vicinity of the prison, where there were cemeteries, and we found that there were new trenches that had been built," he added.

Based on what they heard from detainees, he said they also worked with a specialist research agency to produce a 3D interactive visual mockup of the prison.

Luther said that by combining testimonies from Sednaya Prison with satellite imagery, they have arrived at an estimate of the number of extrajudicial killings there.

Prisoners taken to white room for execution

Luther noted that the prison consists of two main sections: the red building and the white building.

He said the red building is a larger structure where political prisoners, who were perceived as a threat to the regime, were housed. The white building, on the other hand, was initially used to house military personnel, but over time, it was used to hold soldiers who switched sides in the civil war, Luther said.

Some prisoners were told they would be transferred in groups from Sednaya to a civilian prison, but they were later never to be found, he said, quoting former detainees.

Prisoners were put in a van and taken to the white building, where they were taken to an underground room. In that room, a person sitting at a table told the prisoners whose names were on a list that they had been sentenced to death, Luther said.

Luther said this was the room where the prisoners first heard that they were to be executed and that they were then taken to a platform, a noose was put around their necks, they were pushed off the platform and executed by hanging.

Anadolu's footage 'important piece of evidence'

Asked how the new footage shared by the Anadolu team could affect the accountability of those who were complicit in these atrocities, Luther said: "It's a very important piece of evidence, and it corroborates then the claims that Amnesty was making back in 2016 and 2017 in particular."

He said the important thing now is that those who are conducting the investigations prepare criminal cases against those responsible for these crimes.

"Hopefully they will look at that (Anadolu's footage)," he added.

He noted that there are papers scattered around the execution room in Sednaya Prison in Anadolu's footage which may include important information on the crimes committed by regime forces.

"Hopefully some of that has been properly collected and stored and archived. Because in some of those documents, there will be evidence that links the crimes we've been talking about and individuals. And that's, of course, crucial in order to be able then to make a case and get accountability at an individual level."

Syria not being part of Rome Statute 'biggest obstacle'

Luther also spoke about the impact of the new evidence from Sednaya Prison on international judicial processes.

He underlined that Syria's non-participation in the Rome Statute is the biggest obstacle to bringing such cases to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

He highlighted that Russia, "a historical backer of Syria," has used its veto power in the UN Security Council to prevent the situation in Syria from coming before the ICC.

He said this doesn't mean that cases cannot be tried elsewhere. When the judicial system in Syria is reformed, such cases could be brought in Syrian courts or in the national courts of other countries, he said.

Luther pointed out that more could be done, recalling that an international mechanism set up by the UN could be used.

In the “immediate term, that is where justice can be found, that is where justice could be sought," he added.