The Prisons Museum expresses its strong condemnation and deep concern regarding the repeated obstruction imposed by the Ministry of Interior of the Syrian Transitional Government, which has prevented its team from accessing and documenting detention centers operated by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), despite numerous attempts and despite the purely rights-based and documentary nature of this work.
In this context, the Prisons Museum clarifies that it formally contacted the Ministry of Information to obtain authorization to film, and was explicitly informed that the decision to prohibit access had been issued by the Ministry of the Interior, without any written legal basis or clear explanation for the reasons behind this decision.
The Prisons Museum is an independent documentation initiative that works to document prisons and detention centers as potential crime scenes, aiming to preserve evidence, safeguard memory, and serve the right to truth, in accordance with internationally recognized human rights methodologies, and in a manner that serves victims, families of the missing, and future accountability processes.
The Prisons Museum has previously documented most ISIS detention facilities in Syria and Iraq, and has also documented most prisons and security branches of the Assad regime, through transparent and public work in which no legal violations or misuse of sites or documented materials have been recorded. Building on this same method, the Museum now seeks to document detention centers operated by the Syrian Democratic Forces, given the likelihood that these sites contain evidence, records, and crucial information related to grave crimes and the fate of thousands of missing persons, including ISIS members involved in enforced disappearances and mass killings.
Preventing a specialized documentation body from carrying out this role—while media outlets, journalists, content creators, and public figures are allowed to film in a random and unregulated manner in multiple detention sites—raises a fundamental question regarding the criteria for prohibition and permission, and about which authority is empowered to make such decisions without transparency or oversight.
This prohibition cannot be separated from the broader context of the ongoing tampering with former detention sites of the Assad regime. Recent months have seen partial destruction of some prisons and security branches, the reuse of others, and the opening of several sites for artistic and media filming by production companies, social media influencers, and content creators, under official permits issued by the relevant authorities. Such practices constitute a clear violation of the principle of protecting crime scenes and pose a direct threat to material evidence linked to grave crimes suffered by thousands of Syrians, including torture, enforced disappearance, and death resulting from abuse, the consequences of which remain unresolved.
The Prisons Museum affirms that this prohibition is not an isolated incident, but rather part of a broader pattern of restrictions on its work inside Syria. This pattern has previously included the arrest of the Museum’s director, as well as official statements issued by the Ministry of Interior containing false information regarding the reasons for his arrest, without any subsequent apology or correction. This sequence of events leads us to believe that there is a systematic targeting of the Museum’s work, although it remains unclear whether this is due to its documentation of ISIS crimes, its documentation of violations by the former regime, or its criticism of political approaches based on “settlements” that bypass accountability and transitional justice.
Documentation is not a threat to Syria; it is a guarantee for its future. Denying access to prisons and detention centers without a clear legal basis undermines the right to truth, threatens opportunities for accountability, and reproduces the logic of concealment that Syrians rose up against.
Accordingly, the Prisons Museum calls on the Syrian Transitional Government to:
- Immediately allow the Prisons Museum to document detention centers operated by the Syrian Democratic Forces, as sites suspected of being linked to grave crimes, in a manner that ensures the preservation of evidence and prevents tampering.
- Guarantee that the Museum’s work in documenting prisons and security branches of the former Assad regime will not be restricted or obstructed, as this work constitutes an acquired right that was previously carried out without legal objection, and which must not be selectively reversed or curtailed.
- Provide an official and public explanation for the prohibition issued by the Ministry of the Interior, including its legal basis, the authority that issued the decision, its criteria, and its duration, in order to ensure transparency and public accountability.
The work of the Prisons Museum does not target any political or military actor. It is confined to serving truth, victims’ rights, and the dignity of the missing. Any continued obstruction of documentation, or persistence in ambiguity, will be understood as a direct undermining of the path of justice and accountability, and as a contradiction of the principles of the transitional phase, which are presumed to be grounded in transparency and the rejection of impunity.