# Syrian authorities detain Aws Salloum, a feared figure from Sednaya prison
Syrian activists and opposition-linked media say Aws Salloum, a former prison figure accused of brutality inside Sednaya prison, has been detained in raids in Homs.
The reports describe Salloum as a notorious jailer nicknamed the “Azrael of Sednaya,” a reference that has circulated for years among Syrian activists and survivors. According to the account carried by Al Sharq Al Awsat, the operations room calling itself “Radaa al-Adwan” announced his capture during Thursday raids in Homs that targeted remnants of the Assad regime. Videos shared by activists purportedly showed a man identified as Salloum being taken into detention.
Salloum is said to come from Al-Qabo in rural Homs and to have joined Assad’s security apparatus, where survivor testimony later linked him to severe abuse in Sednaya prison. The facility became infamous during the Syrian war as a place of torture, execution, and disappearance. The report says former detainees described him as one of the prison’s most brutal jailers and credits him with acts of extreme violence used to terrorize prisoners.
The name has also been tied to the death of Syrian dissident Mazen Hamada. A resurfaced video circulated by activists shows Hamada describing a jailer he called “Azrael” and recounting a scene of abuse. The article says Hamada later died under torture and that his body was found at a military hospital after Bashar al-Assad’s fall.
The broader context is the collapse of the Assad government and the opening of prisons after opposition factions seized control. On 2025-01-03, the report says, prisons across the country were opened and detainees were released, exposing the scale of abuse inside the system. But many thousands of people remain missing, and mass graves continue to be uncovered.
Because the available report is built largely on activist testimony and circulated video, the core fact that can be stated confidently is narrower than the social media reaction suggests: Syrian-linked forces said they had captured a man identified as Aws Salloum in Homs. The surrounding allegations show why the arrest matters. For many Syrians, Sednaya is not just a prison name but a shorthand for state terror, and any figure associated with it carries enormous symbolic weight.
If confirmed, the detention of Salloum would be another small but significant step in documenting and confronting the abuses that defined the Assad era. Even so, the underlying story remains unfinished, because the fate of many detainees is still unknown and the evidence of past crimes is still being uncovered.
