Saydnaya Prison is where the Syrian state quietly slaughters its own people. Amnesty International

As many as 13,000 people have been hanged to death in Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015 in utmost secrecy.

Every week, often twice per week, between 20 and 50 people are taken from their cells to be hanged, in the middle of the night.

Before they are condemned to death, victims face what the Syrian authorities call a “trial” at the Military Field Court. In reality, this is a one or two-minute procedure in an office, in front of a military officer, where effectively the detainee’s name is logged into a death registry.

On the day of the execution, which prison guards refer to as “the party”, they collect those who will be executed from their cells in the afternoon. The authorities inform the detainees they will be transferred to one of the civilian prisons, which many believe have much better conditions. They are instead brought to a cell in the basement of the building, where they are severely beaten.

A former prison guard described how detainees are severely beaten throughout the night before being driven to an “execution room”:

Whoever comes can beat them, until the officer arrives. We already know they will die anyway, so we do whatever we want with them.

The execution room at Saydnaya was expanded after June 2012, so that more people could be executed at once. Nooses line the wall. On entry to the room, the victims are blindfolded, and do not know that they are about to be killed.

They are then asked to place their fingerprints on statements documenting their death. Finally they are taken, still blindfolded, to concrete platforms, and hanged. They do not know how or when the execution will be carried out until the nooses are placed around their necks. Detainees held in the building in the floors above the execution room reported that they sometimes heard the sounds of these hangings.

Many other people at Saydnaya have been killed after being repeatedly tortured and systematically deprived of food, water, medicine and medical care.

The bodies of those who are killed at Saydnaya are taken away by the truckload and buried in mass graves.

It is inconceivable that these large-scale and systematic practices have not been authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government.

o this day, detainees are still being transferred to Saydnaya, and “trials” at the Military Field Court in al-Qaboun continue. There is therefore no reason to believe that executions have stopped.