Rifaat Al-Assad’s Forces Storm Tadmor Prison, Executing 600-1,200 Detainees in Palmyra

Survivors of Tadmor Prison marked the 46th anniversary of the 1980 massacre in Palmyra with an event titled “The Tadmur Journey—From Painful Memory to Justice,” held in Homs on Friday and attended by representatives of the National Commission for Transitional Justice and the National Commission for Missing Persons.

“Survivors and relatives of former detainees at Tadmor Prison in the countryside of Homs Governorate organized, on Friday, an event to mark the 46th anniversary of the infamous massacre carried out by the regime of Hafez al-Assad against political prisoners, one of the most heinous crimes etched in the memory of Syrians”

Al-Jazeera Net

SANA said the commemoration included a symbolic visit to Tadmur Prison and the Martyrs’ Cemetery in Wadi Uwaydah, and it described the June 27, 1980 massacre as one of the most brutal and unjust mass atrocities in modern Syrian history.

Al-Jazeera Net

SANA reported that the massacre occurred on June 27, the day after an assassination attempt against Hafez al-Assad, when forces from the defense ministry commanded by Rifaat al-Assad stormed the prison and executed between 600 and 1,200 unarmed detainees over several hours.

SANA added that the bodies were buried in mass graves in Wadi Uwaydah, east of Palmyra, and it said human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented the massacre and called for accountability.

The Anadolu report also tied the 1980 killing to units commanded by Rifaat al-Assad and said the prison became famous for the massacre of more than a thousand unarmed people carried out in 1980, with most victims described as members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

At the commemoration, Mohammad Bahaa al-Din al-Khatib al-Hassani, head of the Association of Tadmur Prison Survivors, told SANA that about 500 survivors, accompanied by their children and relatives from various Syrian villages and towns, participated in the event.

SANA said Layla Kashki from the National Commission for Missing Persons emphasized the importance of participating to affirm the Commission’s commitment to standing with victims and families by following up on missing persons cases, uncovering their fate, and achieving justice.

Anadolu Ajansı

Al Jazeera Net quoted Mohammad al-Najari, a former Tadmor prisoner from 1979 to 1992, describing an execution in the Workshop dormitory where “they forgot someone in the dormitory,” and when discovered in the evening, “they executed him by closing the iron door on his head.”

Al Jazeera Net also quoted Essam, the son of former detainee Mahmoud Issam Haj Mahram, saying “Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays are the days of executions, by hanging,” and he added that the guard used to force prisoners to lick his shoe, strike them on their mouths, and break their teeth.

The same Al Jazeera Net account said the event concentrates its activities in the “Sixth Square,” which survivors call the “Execution Square,” and it described Wadi Awida as a mass grave for thousands of executions.

While the Tadmor anniversary focused on the 1980 massacre, Le Monde reported that three Americans were killed in Syria on Saturday, December 13, following an ambush attributed to the Islamic State group, with CENTCOM saying two American soldiers and one American civilian, an interpreter, were killed and three other American soldiers were wounded.

“The eastern zone of Homs has been an unstable area for years”

Atalayar

Le Monde quoted Donald Trump promising, “We will respond,” after the attack, and it said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned: “If you target Americans—anywhere in the world—you will spend the rest of your short and stressful life knowing that the United States will hunt you down, find you, and kill you without mercy.”

Le Monde also reported that the Syrian interior ministry spokesman Noureddine Al-Baba said on Sunday morning that the killer was part of the Syrian security forces and that he was to be struck off for being suspected of extremist Islamist ideas.

Atalayar framed the Palmyra attack as a manifestation of Daesh’s terrorist violence in Syria’s Homs province and said the case of Idlib involved a December attack that killed four interior security forces members.

In the same broader context of Palmyra and detention history, Anadolu said Tadmor prison was filmed “in ruins” and described it as a detention center infamous for the massacre of more than a thousand unarmed people carried out in 1980 by units commanded by Rifaat al-Assad, before Daesh took control in 2015 and destroyed the prison with explosives.