BEIRUT – A Syrian prison warden screams at a group of chained, crouching inmates in a harrowing scene from one of several Ramadan television series this year that tackle the era of former ruler Bashar al-Assad.
Talking about Syria’s prisons and the torture, enforced disappearances and executions that took place there was taboo during half a century of the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule, but the topics are now fertile ground for creative productions, though not without controversy.
An abandoned soap factory north of the Lebanese capital Beirut has been transformed into a replica of the basements and corridors of Syria’s Saydnaya prison, a facility synonymous with horror under Assad, for the series “Going Out to the Well”.
Crews were filming the last episodes this week as the Muslim holy month kicked off — primetime viewing in the Arab world, with channels and outlets furiously competing for eager audiences’ attention.
Director Mohammed Lutfi told AFP that “for Syrians, Saydnaya prison is a dark place, full of stories and tales”.
The series focuses on the 2008 prison riots in Saydnaya, “when inmates revolted against the soldiers and took control of the prison, and there were negotiations between them and Syrian intelligence services”, he said.
The military prison, one of Syria’s largest and which also held political prisoners, remains an open wound for thousands of families still looking for traces of their loved ones.
The Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison estimates that some 30,000 people were thrown into the facility after the 2011 uprising against Assad began, but only 6,000 came out after he was toppled.
Amnesty International has described the prison outside Damascus, which was notorious for torture and enforced disappearances, as a “human slaughterhouse.”
