1980 Tadmor prison massacre

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. 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. Islamist uprising , 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, with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Fighting Vanguard carrying out attacks on targets associated with the government and security forces. In 1979, militants massacred Syrian cadets at an artillery school in Aleppo, marking the end of sporadic attacks in favor of a full-fledged campaign of urban warfare against the government. The government's response to the massacre was aggressive, resulting 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]". 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." 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. 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. 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). 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: with special forces soldier Isa Ibrahim Fayad, who partook in the massacre, describing the events as such:“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."-600 to 1,000-1,100 people). Some prisoners tried to resist: for this reason 1 soldier was killed and 2 more were wounded. 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 details. == Aftermath ==

The massacre marked another escalation in government repression. At July 7, Syrian poet Faraj Bayrakdar, who was a political prisoner for many years, called Tadmor Prison a "kingdom of death and madness". == See also ==