Guards would drag the tables away from under the feet of condemned men. Nooses around their necks and hands tied behind their backs, they would die by hanging. Most of the bodies were burned in Sednaya's crematorium.
"This is the noise we used to hear," the 31-year-old said. "When we hear this noise, it means they are executing people. Imagine sitting upstairs and knowing prisoners are being executed downstairs."
Hamami was freed from Sednaya after five hellish years on 8 December, when Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the country after a lightning-fast Islamist rebel offensive. Along with the 20 other men held in his dirty, dark and unfurnished cell, he heard shouting in the corridor before collapsing in astonishment when his father's face appeared in the cell door's small window.
A week later, the mechanic wanted to return to Sednaya, on the outskirts of Damascus, to retrieve clothes - but also, he said, to try to understand that what he had lived through in what he called "the killing machine" was real. On release, he was very thin after experiencing complications from diabetes which was not treated properly during his imprisonment. He is missing teeth from beatings and has three broken ribs.
This story is from the December 27, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the December 27, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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