The Empire didn’t always blast every Rebel they found. When soldiers, leaders, or even droids were captured, their fate depended on their species, rank, and how valuable the Empire thought they were. None of the options were good—slavery, prisons, torture, or execution—but each path told the same story: captivity under the Empire was brutal.
Non-Human Rebels
For alien fighters, capture almost always meant chains. The Empire’s xenophobia (aka speciesism) made non-humans easy targets for slavery. One real example is Greybok, a Wookiee tribal diplomat. He was enslaved and forced to swing a pneumo-hammer in the spice mines of Sevarcos. When he tried to escape, Imperial overseers cut off one of his arms as punishment. He only regained his freedom years later, fighting alongside rebels during the liberation of Kashyyyk.
Greybok’s story wasn’t unique. Wookiees across the galaxy were classified as “non-sentient” so they could be enslaved legally. Others were shipped to Kessel, where the spice mines were infamous for their horrific conditions. Survivors said prisoners lasted only months before collapsing from exhaustion or poison in the air. Still others were packed off to construction sites for Imperial megaprojects like the Death Star. When the work was done, many of those slaves were quietly erased to protect Imperial secrets.
Human Rebels
Humans weren’t spared, but their treatment could look different. Captured human rebels were more likely to be sent to prisons instead of straight into slavery.
The Narkina 5 complex is a good example. It wasn’t just a prison—it was also a factory. Inmates stood barefoot on electrified floors, working endless shifts building machinery, knowing a single mistake could get their whole unit shocked.
Sometimes human captives were locked in cells for years, treated as “typical” prisoners. Other times, they were sent to labor camps right beside alien slaves. Imperial officers weren’t consistent—some believed humans could be re-educated for propaganda, others saw them as just another set of hands to break down in the factories. Still, compared to aliens, humans had a slightly higher chance of survival.
High-Profile Rebels
When someone important was caught, things turned much darker. Admirals, ace pilots, or cell leaders were taken for interrogation before anything else.
The ISB had specialists who focused on breaking prisoners. Dedra Meero, for example, brought in Dr. Gorst, whose “interviews” were nothing more than psychological torture. Techniques ranged from drugs to sound devices that shattered nerves. These sessions squeezed out every scrap of intel about rebel networks, safehouses, and fleets.
And once the Empire had what it wanted? Execution. Sometimes it was quiet, in a back room. Other times, it was designed as a spectacle. Take Paak, for instance—a rebel sympathizer who was publicly executed by the ISB as an example to intimidate his community. His death wasn’t just punishment; it was theater, staged to crush morale and scare others into silence.
On-The-Spot Executions
Protocol said captured rebels should be taken alive. In practice, many Imperial officers ignored that. Some decided that dragging prisoners to camps or prisons was too much trouble. After certain battles, stormtroopers lined up captives and executed them on the spot. For rebels in those moments, surrender didn’t buy safety—it just delayed the blaster fire for a few minutes.
Captured Droids
Even droids weren’t safe. The Empire treated them like data caches first, machines second. Their memory banks could hold hyperspace routes, encryption codes, or even locations of rebel bases. After making use of them, droid memory wipes became routine to keep them compliant.
Once the information was taken, the body of the droid had two fates. Some were reprogrammed and pressed into Imperial service, stripped of their old personalities. Others were destroyed outright. Canon proves this: the Decommissioning Facility on Corellia, seen in The Bad Batch, melted down old Separatist battle droids after their intel was extracted. Rebel droids caught in the field likely faced the same process—wiped, reprogrammed, or recycled into raw materials.
Living Under Imperial Rule
For captured rebels, freedom was never on the table. Non-humans were sent to mines or camps, humans filled prisons and factories, leaders were tortured then executed, and even droids were memory-wiped before being reprogrammed or scrapped.
The Empire’s goal was to control every prisoner, every witness, and every scrap of information. For anyone who fought against them, capture was rarely the end of the fight—it was the beginning of something far worse.