Asharq Al-Awsat collected harrowing testimonies from survivors of “deliberate liquidation” operations carried out against detained opponents at Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus and other military hospitals during the years of the Syrian revolution.
They described torture methods and killing techniques, most notably “breaking the neck.”
Syrian security authorities have detained dozens of people for questioning over those crimes, while most of those responsible and those who carried them out remain at large.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights said the data it had collected indicated the existence of organized networks of doctors, nurses, and security personnel involved in the crimes, including organ removal and direct killings.
This comes amid continuing shock among most Syrians since the beginning of this month, after videos and leaked images documenting the torture of detainees inside several sites, including Tishreen Hospital, were published.
The largest medical complex
Tishreen Military Hospital, located in the Barzeh neighborhood northeast of Damascus, opened in 1982 as the largest medical complex in Syria. It included modern buildings and received civilians as well as military personnel.
The hospital became one of the country’s leading specialized centers, with more than 36 specialized medical departments and divisions, modern equipment, especially for kidney dialysis, and a staff of nearly 1,600 doctors, nurses, administrators and guards.
The hospital’s administrative structure consisted of a director general, an officer with the rank of brigadier general, and two deputies, usually with the rank of brigadier general or colonel, one for technical and medical affairs and the other for administrative affairs.
It also included a security officer, whose rank ranged from captain to colonel; heads of divisions and departments, with ranks from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general; specialists and resident doctors, with ranks from first lieutenant to colonel; nursing staff, who were noncommissioned officers; and conscripts and corporals.
The number of military hospitals and clinics under the former regime reached about 30. They were affiliated with the Military Medical Services Directorate and distributed across 14 provinces.
The most prominent included Tishreen, 601 and Harasta hospitals in Damascus and its countryside, as well as hospitals in Aleppo, Homs and Latakia.
Since the leak of old videos and images showing that military hospitals, including Tishreen, had turned into “human slaughterhouses” under the former regime, families have demanded that those who committed the crimes be identified, arrested and held accountable, and that the fate of their loved ones be disclosed.
Asharq Al-Awsat learned that about 40 doctors had been detained for questioning, including three heads of medical departments and divisions.
However, the defense and interior ministries did not respond to Asharq Al-Awsat’s questions about the medical staff involved and the number of those detained.
The liquidation section
Doctor Mahmoud Rahban was a colonel in the former Military Medical Services Directorate. A resident of Damascus, he served in several medical centers and military hospitals, the last of which was Aleppo Hospital.
Rahban told Asharq Al-Awsat that buildings inside military hospitals, including Tishreen, had, over the years of the revolution, turned into mini security branches that were not affiliated with the hospital administration but were overseen by military police personnel.
The small building in Tishreen Hospital, as in Aleppo Hospital, was completely separate from the main building where doctors worked and where ordinary citizens came for treatment.
During the first years of the revolution, Rahban worked with a group of activists to bring medicines and medical supplies into the Barzeh and Qaboun neighborhoods. He was active within the Barzeh Housing Coordination Committee for the Syrian Revolution and the Union of Damascus Coordination Committees.
Rahban was arrested on charges of “financing terrorist acts,” referred to the “terrorism court,” and then sent to the notorious Sednaya prison.
After 75 days in detention, he was released under a decision to “bar prosecution for lack of evidence,” after paying large bribes to investigators and the investigating judge to secure his release.
Rahban said that when detainees became ill, most of them were referred to the “special section” at Tishreen Hospital.
“The treatment was very bad. We were beaten severely and described as terrorists and traitors by doctors and medical staff, whose main concern at the beginning of the revolution was to demonstrate absolute loyalty to the regime,” he said.
Liquidation by breaking necks
Despite the severity of torture in those hospitals, especially Tishreen, some people managed to survive, including Brigadier General Mohammed Mansour Ammar, who was serving at al-Seen Military Airport in the Damascus countryside when the revolution began in 2011.
He was detained in Sednaya between 2014 and 2022 on charges of “providing terrorists with information.”
Ammar told Asharq Al-Awsat that he was transferred to Tishreen Hospital six times during those years. “Each time, the number of those transferred was about 20 detainees, but no more than three of us would return,” he said.
Ammar described how the killings took place.
“All the members of the military police detachment were thugs. Every day, they would choose 10 detainees and order them to lie on their backs. Then one of the members would come and step forcefully on the detainee’s neck, killing him within minutes, while those still alive were forced to collect the bodies at the door of the detachment,” he said.
He pointed to the forensic doctor’s indifference. “He would not enter the detachment or examine the patients. He would simply ask the assistant from the doorway, with disgust, about the number of bodies so he could record them,” Ammar said. He added that during four visits to Tishreen Hospital, he witnessed “the liquidation of about 45 detainees by breaking their necks.”
Among the survivors was also Ibrahim Ali al-Hamdan, who held the rank of conscripted first lieutenant in the former regime’s army in Daraa. He defected in mid-2012 and was arrested in Damascus in August 2012.
Hamdan spoke bitterly to Asharq Al-Awsat about the severe torture he endured for a month and a half at Harasta Hospital.
“My body was exhausted from torture for three weeks. An assistant named Abu al-Layth told me, ‘There is a recommendation from the head of the branch to slaughter you because you are an informant for the Free Syrian Army.’”
He added: “A medical committee came to the section. When the doctor examined me, he found that my feet were infected because of the severe beatings. He cut open the swelling with a scalpel, without any anesthesia or disinfectant, and began pressing on it.”
According to Hamdan, Abu al-Layth once brought in a detainee, accompanied by a doctor and two members of the security forces. They tortured him severely for hours. After resting briefly, they resumed torturing him until midnight, and he died at dawn.
In July 2013, Hamdan was transferred to Sednaya prison. During his detention, he was referred 47 times to Tishreen Hospital, where on one occasion he stayed for about four months while suffering from several illnesses.
“They gave me an IV drip, and I developed a severe fever. I felt I was dying, and I vomited blood, while the doctors were saying that I might die,” Hamdan said.
Because of his condition, a doctor requested that Hamdan be transferred to the intensive care unit. But the director of the medical section replied: “He will remain in the holding cell until he dies. Intensive care is for war wounded, not traitors.”
Hamdan, who was released from Sednaya in late 2020 after serving his sentence, said “the hospital was a place to finish off detainees, not treat them. During four months, I recited the shahada for 40 people before they died.”
Diab Serrih, executive director of the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison, said: “It is not possible, given the current data and circumstances, to verify any figures for the number of victims at Tishreen Military Hospital. But we estimate that about 39,000 detainees entered Sednaya prison between 2011 and 2021, of whom about 6,000 remained alive.”
Serrih said in a report published in 2023 that a significant number of those who lost their lives were transferred alive to Tishreen Military Hospital, then died there. He added: “We were able to document only 80 cases of people who returned alive from the hospital to Sednaya prison, out of 1,160 documented cases inside the prison.”
The fate of the perpetrators
In this context, Rahban said the old Military Medical Services Directorate had been “completely dissolved, and most of those involved in those crimes are believed to have fled the country.”
He said Major General Dr. Ammar Suleiman, the former director of the Military Medical Services Directorate, who had close ties with Bashar al-Assad, was chiefly responsible for the liquidation operations carried out in those hospitals.
Rahban said Suleiman was believed to have “fled the country, while Brigadier General Dr. Nizar Ismail was arrested two or three months after liberation.” Ismail had held the posts of deputy director of the directorate, head of the supply branch and head of its therapeutic branch.
“Information indicates that the head of the officers’ department in the directorate, Colonel Lubna Ali, fled on the night of liberation from her office to her hometown, then abroad. As for the directorate’s security officer, Brigadier General Mazen Iskandar, there is no information about him,” Rahban said.
According to Rahban, Major General Dr. Mufid Darwish, who served as hospital director until the fall of the regime, knew all the details of what was happening in the hospital, whether in the main building or in the isolated building for sick detainees.
But his treatment was extremely harsh even toward the medical staff working in the main civilian building.
Darwish remained in the country for a short period after liberation, then left for the United Arab Emirates. Some doctors were detained and later released, including the security officer at Tishreen Hospital, Brigadier General Dr. Hani Salloum.
As for the heads of medical departments and divisions in the main building, Rahban said they “had no connection to what was happening in the isolated building.”
He said most of them had regularized their status and were granted settlement documents after it was confirmed that they were not involved in bloodshed and that no personal claims had been filed against them.
Travel ban notices were placed on their names at land, air, and sea crossings. Anyone wishing to travel must submit a request to the Ministry of Defense and may be allowed to do so once for a period of three months after a security review.
Distribution of roles and tasks
The role of the forensic medicine division in the hospital was to document the deaths of detainees and issue death certificates.
But its head would state in the death certificate that the death resulted from “cardiac and respiratory arrest” or “cardiovascular collapse,” even though detainees had in fact died under torture.
From 2011 until liberation in December 2024, Brigadier General Dr. Akram Fares al-Shaar, from the Hama countryside, headed the forensic medicine division at Tishreen Hospital.
The division also included his deputy, Brigadier General Ismail Kiwan from the city of Sweida; Lieutenant Colonel Ayman Khalo; Lieutenant Munqith Shammut; and seven noncommissioned officers who served as nurses and administrators.
Rahban said Shaar had been detained, and noted that Ayman Khalo had been detained for some time over a criminal case unrelated to Tishreen Hospital. Ismail Kiwan fled to areas controlled by Druze cleric Hikmat al-Hijri in Sweida province in southern Syria.
With the dissolution of the old Military Medical Services Directorate, Asharq Al-Awsat’s information indicates that the number of former medical staff members who returned, including doctors and nurses, “can be counted on one hand.”
A number of doctors who were not involved in crimes are practicing in private clinics, while others have left for Western, regional, and Arab countries.
An accelerated process is currently underway to evacuate and hand over the ready housing units affiliated with Tishreen Hospital. The move implements a decision issued by the Ministry of Defense at the beginning of this May, which set a one-month deadline from the date of issuance.
An organized network of killing and torture
The Syrian Network for Human Rights does not yet have a fully documented figure for the number of doctors and medical personnel involved in liquidation operations specifically inside Tishreen Hospital.
What can be confirmed, according to the network’s documentation methodology, is that the hospital included an organized network of doctors, nurses, and security officers who cooperated in killings and torture, and that the violations were not committed by isolated individuals.
Its director, Fadel Abdul Ghany, told Asharq Al-Awsat that “the data collected by the network indicate the existence of networks of doctors, nurses, and security personnel involved in these crimes, including organ removal in addition to direct killings.”
The available data point to three categories. The first includes detainees whom the new security authorities managed to arrest. The second includes those who fled Syria. The third includes those who remained inside the country with unresolved legal status.
Abdul Ghany said some medical staff members were still in the hospital housing units or in different parts of Syria, as revealed by the recent security operation conducted in the nurses’ housing units affiliated with the hospital.
Abdul Ghany said the escape of some of those individuals posed a serious challenge to accountability efforts, requiring immediate international coordination to issue Interpol notices and international arrest warrants against suspects.
Abdul Ghany noted that some suspects had been arrested, but said their number remained limited compared with the scale of documented crimes.
Among the most prominent cases documented by official Syrian sources was the Interior Ministry’s announcement in late 2025 that five former members of the medical, judicial, military, and security cadres had been arrested in the nurses’ housing units in early May 2026, while a number of former workers were detained.
A German court issued its ruling on June 16, 2025, sentencing Syrian doctor Alaa Mousa to life in prison on charges of committing crimes against humanity, including torturing detainees in military hospitals in Syria.
