Omar Alshogre

He has received death threats for his open discussion of the abuses he faced. In January 2018, one of his former torturers from Branch 215 called him and told him he was in Stockholm. The Nation has noted Alshogre "[a]s one of the few to survive the slaughterhouse of Sednaya, and someone who has personally tagged over 8,000 bodies, who appears in various media and can rattle off the names and locations of multiple military prisons, including the brigadier general in charge of each facility and the names of deceased inmates and their home towns, Omar is a formidable and feared witness".

Alshogre's mother, who had fled to Turkey, collected $15,000 to pay a bribe for his release. He was freed in June 2015 following a mock execution. At that time, he weighed only 34 kilograms as a result of starvation and tuberculosis. He travelled to Europe as a refugee seeking to obtain access to medical treatment and escape from the regime.

The regime transferred Alshogre to Sednaya Prison on August 15, 2014. He says Branch 215 was heaven compared to Sednaya, where psychological and physical torture were much more intense. He attests that prisoners faced arbitrary executions for offenses like talking without authorization. Ashogre learned both solidarity and a wealth of knowledge from the doctors, teachers and other educated inmates he met there. Alshogre has termed this experience "the University of Whispers."

On March 15, 2013, Alshogre's older cousin Rashad died after enduring extreme torture. In early 2014, his closest cousin, Bashir, died as a result of torture and tuberculosis. Alshogre had been carrying him to enable him to go to the restroom, as he had become too weak to walk by his own.

On November 16, 2012, while visiting his cousins, armed militiamen entered his house and arrested Omar alongside his cousins, Bashir, Nour, and Rashad. The militiamen sent them to the Military Intelligence in central Tartus for investigation. Bashir and Rashad would both die in prison. Alshogre then spent a total of three years in detention.

The Syrian government first arrested Omar Alshogre for participating in an anti-government protest when he was 15-years old. The Bashar al-Assad authorities jailed him for two days and subsequently released him. The regime arrested him seven times between 2011 and 2013.

Alshogre, born in al-Bayda in 1995, is now a Swedish resident. He is among the few people to have survived Syria's prisons and had the position to share his experience.