1980 Tadmor prison massacre

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1980 Tadmor prison massacre
Part of Islamist uprising in Syria
Image of Rifaat al-Assad in CIA report (cropped).png
Image of Rifaat al-Assad, who led the massacre, from a CIA report
Location Flag of the United Arab Republic (1958-1971), Flag of Syria (1980-2024).svg Tadmor Prison, Palmyra, Syria
DateJune 27, 1980
TargetFlag of the Muslim Brotherhood.svg Muslim Brotherhood Prisoners
Attack type
Massacre
Deaths500-1100 prisoners, 1 soldier
Injured2 soldiers
PerpetratorsDefense Companies SSI.svg Defense Companies
Flag of the United Arab Republic (1958-1971), Flag of Syria (1980-2024).svg 40th Army Corps
Flag of the United Arab Republic (1958-1971), Flag of Syria (1980-2024).svg 138th Security Brigade
MotiveRevenge for the assassination attempt on President Hafez al-Assad

On June 27, 1980, a massacre was committed on the prisoners of the Tadmor Prison by the Syrian Defense Companies in revenge for an assassination attempt on Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, which took place the previous day. [1] [2] [3] After the assassination attempt, on orders from the president's brother, Rifaat al-Assad, fighters from the Defense Companies militia flew into the prison in helicopters and began indiscriminately killing prisoners, ultimately killing an estimated 1,000 people. [4] [5] [6]

Contents

Background

Tadmor prison

The buildings were first used as a prison for political prisoners in 1966. When Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970, the prison was greatly expanded. [7] As a result, it gained a reputation as one of the most brutal and deplorable prisons on the planet, repeatedly causing outrage from media and law enforcement organizations, such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. [8] [9] [10] [11]

Islamist uprising

Official portrait of Hafez al-Assad, president of Syria (1971-2000) Official portrait of Hafez al-Assad.jpg
Official portrait of Hafez al-Assad, president of Syria (1971-2000)

Beginning in 1976, Syria was in the grip of the so-called "Islamist uprising" against the neo-Ba'athist regime of president Hafez al-Assad - the Muslim Brotherhood and the Fighting Vanguard carried out terrorist attacks on targets associated with the government and security forces. The turning point was 1979 - when militants massacred Syrian cadets at an artillery school in Aleppo. This was a turning point because it marked the end of sporadic attacks in favor of a full-fledged campaign of urban warfare against the government. [12] The government's response to the massacre was very aggressive, and resulted in increased repression. Gradually, the situation escalated - the president's brother, Rifaat al-Assad, told the Ba'ath Party's regional congress in January 1980: " Stalin sacrificed ten million to preserve the Bolshevik Revolution and Syria should be prepared to do the same... I am personally willing to fight a hundred years, demolish a million strongholds, and sacrifice a million martyrs [to end Muslim Brotherhood]". [13] In addition to this statement, Rifaat, standing on a tank in March of 1980, said that he was ready to kill a thousand people a day to cleanse the country of the Muslim Brotherhood. [14]

Earlier in 1980, prisoners in Tadmor began rioting, demanding better living conditions in the prison. Security forces responded by killing more than a hundred of them, whose bodies were dumped in mass graves. [15]

Attempted assassination of Hafez al-Assad

On 26 June 1980, Hafez al-Assad himself narrowly escaped death after a failed assassination attempt. The assailant fired a burst of rounds and threw two grenades, the first being kicked away by Assad and the second being covered by his personal bodyguard, Khalid al-Husayn, who died instantly. It was carried out by Muslim Brotherhood supporters. [16] [17] [18] The very next day the government carried out its revenge.

Massacre

On the morning of June 27, 22 helicopters took off from Hama and Damascus towards Palmyra. On board were a total of 350 commandos of the "Defense Companies", 100 soldiers of the 40th Army Corps and 100 members of the 138th Security Brigade (a total of up to 550 people). [4] At 6.30 am the helicopters arrived at their destination [14] - 470 soldiers remained on site to guard the helicopters, while 80 began to move into the prison. They were divided into groups of 10 and were given orders to kill all prisoners who might be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. [4] [19] In essence, they could kill anyone - and they did. Prisoners were executed right in their cells, without any interrogation, simply on the grounds of suspicion of connections with the Muslim Brotherhood: [4] they were shot at indiscriminately with machine guns and pelted with grenades. [5] [6] The massacre continued for several hours [20] [21] (according to other sources - less than one hour). [22] This is how the Alawite special forces soldier Isa Ibrahim Fayad described it (from the book by Eugene Rogan "The Arabs: A History"):

“The guards opened the doors for us. Six or seven of us went in and killed everyone in there, about 60 or 70 people. I shot about 15 people myself. In the neighboring blocks, you could also hear machine gun fire and the cries of the dying: “Allahu Akbar!” ... We killed almost 550 of these Muslim Brotherhood bastards" [14]

The massacre resulted in the killing of an estimated 500 [23] -600 [24] to 1,000 [25] -1,100 people [20] (almost all prisoners [26] ). Some prisoners tried to resist: for this reason 1 soldier was killed and 2 more were wounded. [14] After the massacre, it took two weeks to clear the prison of blood and corpses. [27] The massacre was carried out in strict secrecy - the outside world only learned about it eight months later, when Syrian intelligence agents captured in Jordan exposed it and provided some details. [22]

Heritage

Rifaat and Hafez al-Assads, 1982 Hafez al-Assad and his brother Rifaat al-Assad at the military ceremony, circa 1982.jpg
Rifaat and Hafez al-Assads, 1982

The prison incident marked another escalation in government repression. At July 7 [14] , the government issued Law No. 49, which declared membership in the Muslim Brotherhood or the Fighting Vanguard a capital crime punishable by death. [13] The burial site of those executed was never revealed, and the government released no information about the dead. [11] In October 1981, Hafez al-Assad said: "We must completely eliminate any trace of this gang by effective revolutionary means, no matter how long it takes us". [13]

The massacre is well known throughout Syria. [28] Syrian poet Faraj Bayrakdar, who was a political prisoner for many years, called prison a "kingdom of death and madness". [24] The massacre and the prison in general have occupied a special place in Syrian literature written by opposition figures and even former political prisoners, and have become the subject of books, poems, novels and even documentaries. [29]

See also

References

  1. West, Nigel (2017-08-07). Encyclopedia of Political Assassinations. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. ISBN   978-1-5381-0239-8.
  2. Dumper, Michael Richard Thomas; Stanley, Bruce (2006-11-16). Cities of the Middle East and North Africa: A Historical Encyclopedia. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN   978-1-57607-920-1.
  3. Mikaberidze, Alexander (2013-06-25). Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: 2 volumes [2 volumes]. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN   979-8-216-05064-3.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "PROCEEDINGS FOR WAR CRIMES AGAINST RIFAAT AL-ASSAD" (PDF).
  5. 1 2 "Tadmur Prison: A Special Report". www.shrc.org. Archived from the original on July 9, 2016.
  6. 1 2 Kerry Pither. "Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror", 2008.
  7. Taleghani, R. Shareah (2015). "Breaking the Silence of Tadmor Military Prison". Middle East Report (275): 21–25. ISSN   0899-2851. JSTOR   24426583.
  8. "SYRIA: TORTURE, DESPAIR AND DEHUMANISATION IN TADMUR MILITARY PRISON". www.amnesty.org. Amnesty International. 18 September 2001. Retrieved 2016-07-10.
  9. "Inside Tadmur: The worst prison in the world?". BBC News. 2015-06-19. Retrieved 2025-08-21.
  10. "SYRIA: Torture, despair and dehumanization in Tadmur Military Prison" (PDF).
  11. 1 2 "Syria". www.hrw.org. Retrieved 2025-08-21.
  12. Seale, Patrick; McConville, Maureen (1989). Asad of Syria: the struggle for the Middle East. Berkeley Los Angeles: University of California press. ISBN   978-0-520-06667-0.
  13. 1 2 3 Conduit, Dara (August 2019). The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-108-49977-4.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Роган, Юджин (2023-05-03). Арабы: История. XVI-XXI вв (in Russian). Альпина нон-фикшн. ISBN   978-5-00139-152-4.
  15. Amrahs, Atina (2025-02-01). Most Dangerous Prisons in the World. Mahesh Dutt Sharma.
  16. Moubayed, Sami (2015). Under the Black Flag: At the Frontier of the New Jihad. I.B.Tauris. pp. 38–39. ISBN   9781784533083.
  17. Seale, Patrick (1989), Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East, University of California Press, p.328-329
  18. Syria’s Tadmor Prison Massacre: Reliving Horrors of 32 Years Past JUNE 27, 2012
  19. Rogerson, Barnaby (2024-01-04). The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East. Profile Books. ISBN   978-1-78283-294-2.
  20. 1 2 Watch (Organization), Human Rights; Staff, Human Rights Watch (2002). World Report 2002: Events of 2001, November 2000-November 2001. Human Rights Watch. ISBN   978-1-56432-267-8.
  21. Mandaville, Michael (February 2009). Citizen-Soldier Handbook: 101 Ways Every American Can Fight Terrorism. Dog Ear Publishing. ISBN   978-1-59858-671-8.
  22. 1 2 Saffour, Razan. "Remembering Syria's Tadmur Prison Massacre, 44 years on". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2025-08-21.
  23. Commins, David; Lesch, David W. (2013-12-05). Historical Dictionary of Syria. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. ISBN   978-0-8108-7966-9.
  24. 1 2 Taleghani, R. Shareah (2015). "Breaking the Silence of Tadmor Military Prison". Middle East Report (275): 21–25. ISSN   0899-2851. JSTOR   24426583.
  25. Asaad, Lava; Hasanat, Fayeza (2022-09-16). In the Crossfire of History: Women's War Resistance Discourse in the Global South. Rutgers University Press. ISBN   978-1-9788-3021-9.
  26. "Tadmor Archives". TRIAL International. Retrieved 2025-08-21.
  27. The Cell of Survival: Bara Sarraj Archived 2016-03-23 at the Wayback Machine , Jadaliyya
  28. "The multiple symbolisms of Palmyra: Stones that speak". The Economist . Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  29. Ufheil-Somers, Amanda (2015-06-28). "Breaking the Silence of Tadmor Military Prison". MERIP. Retrieved 2025-08-21.