Tourist in Syria witnesses conditions in prison – and is shocked

Tourist in Syria witnesses conditions in prison – and is shocked
January 10, 2010 by sks
Filed under News, Syria



Witness from a Syrian prison: a unique kind of cruelty and torture

- an interview by Abdulwahab Talabani:



There has been much talk about the methods of oppression and torture in prisons in various countries. Syria is known for its brutality towards its opponents, and below is a true story to demonstrate this.

A young Kurdish poet who had lived in Syria between 2000 to 2002 managed to travel to Australia, legally arriving in Australia in November 2003. He stayed for about three years, and then wanted to travel to Kurdistan to visit his family and relatives, and from there to visit Syria to see his friends whom had met during his stay there.



Kurdish poet Fared Makhmouri explained why he chose to pass through Syria:
“During the time I stayed in Syria, before I went to Iran, I loved Syria as a people and history, and I had built good relations with many Syrian writers, in particular the Kurdish ones. I had two years of nice memories in that beautiful community, except for its harsh regime. I wanted to go back to the places where I had lived and to meet my friends, and to film in some archaeological locations of Syrian heritage”.


His camera sent him to detention



Makhmouri is a young man from Erbil in the south of Kurdistan. He is an intellectual and an experienced journalist, and he represents a new generation of poets. He said:
“When I arrived in Damascus on May 1st 2007 I decided to stay there for few days to film heritage sires and some of the markets. On 3rd May 2007 I went to Hamidiya market and its outlying areas. I had my camera and started to film some scenes like every other tourist did, and it was only a short time before two civilian men approached me and ordered me harshly to follow them. When I asked them who they were, and why I should go with them, they said they were Political Security Services staff, and I would find the answers to my questions when we arrived at their offices. I had no choice, but I was sure that I had done nothing wrong, my papers were in order, I did not assault anybody and I do not have anything to do with Syrian politics. When arrived at the Political Security Services I began to discover the dark side of the Syrian regime, and the brutality that ignores the value of humanity through its unimaginatively inventive and horrible methods of torture.”



Fared Makhmouri added that during his detention, which lasted about fifteen days, he was sent to three different prisons, and each was harder than the last. He was detained in Political Security Services branch, the State Security building and the Palestine Branch Intelligence building, and then to the Immigration and Passports Department where he was released. He had not been subjected to the torture in that office, but they extorted money from him so that he could be removed through the Rabiya border control near to Iraq. He paid this money, but despite taking his money they forced him to travel through Ramadi border control which is controlled in parts by terrorists. He was lucky to come through with his life when the terrorists stopped the car he was travelling in on the route towards Baghdad.



Forcing detainees to sleep on top of each other is one of the methods of Syrian Arab torture



Makhmouri said:

“The intelligence officers of the Political Security Services had creative and malicious methods of torture: painful beating with cables, punches, hanging by the legs, insults, verbal abuse and starvation, and food would be full of gravel and sawdust, or with extra salt or without salt. I lived a life of dirty and brutal torture which I have not read about in any book.

They threw us into a room so that we were about 70 people in a small space that did not exceed 4 x 4m. The room had a small metal window, and we stuck to one to another, hardly able to move. At night we were forced to sleep on top of each other, so that the first group of detainees lay on the ground, and other detainees were laying onto of them to make a second layer. When a person in the first layer wanted to change his sleeping position, the person above him had to change his position too. We were subjected to breathing difficulties and the stench of sweaty bodies, and deadly psychological torment. I suffered a lot, they did not think of us as being human, we were isolated from the world, and any objections raised by us were confronted with a lot of obscene insults that seemed to be well-practiced.”



The life of Kurds is worthless//Arab teenager crammed in with adults



Makhmouri said:
“In the prison where I was detained, I met many detainees, and in particular Syria Kurds. There was a young Kurdish man called Gandi who had been arrested for trivial reasons, e.g. taking part in a demonstration, and he had been held in prison for 12 months without trial. There was also a Kurdish young man, Rakan, from al-Jazeera area who had been imprisoned on charges of smuggling. There were a further forty to fifty Kurdish people. They talk to me about the severity of their incarceration; they said to me that they were imprisoned for long periods of time underground, in deep basements, where they were not able to see the sun for three months. They were physically weakened and had lost their natural skin colour, and were suffering mental and physical exhaustion. Their hair had became long, and the smell of sweat was awful as they were not allowed to wash for a long time. I met a Kurdish movie artist, a young man from South Kurdistan named Rizgar who was detained with another young man called Halkawet.



I noted that when you are a Kurd in Syria’s prisons your suffering is increased, and you are insulted more. The Syrian police believe that Kurds do not deserve life, however, unusually, an Arab teenager younger than 15 years was jailed among adult detainees.”



Because he was filming, this means he is a spy!


Makhmouri added:
“My charge was very serious as it was for spying. Put simply, I had been accused of this as I had been seen filming, but I was filming the market and minarets. I could not tell them that I lived previously in Syria as that would bring more problems. They beat me severely during the investigation, and insulted me and swore at me. I did not know that they would behave in this way. Eventually, after some pressure came from abroad and they could not confirm any of evidence against me, they could not detain me longer so I was released. ”


I should also mention that I during the time of my detention, I saw two staff in this service who had some sense of humanity, but they were fearful of showing their feelings in public. I could see that they were not happy with what they were doing. I made a note of the name of one of them, but this has to remain confidential to protect him.”



Makhmouri said:
“Bribery and extortion are commonly used by Syrian intelligence services. If you pay a sum of money maybe you can improve your circumstances a little, but it does not prevent verbal abuse and beatings. This will be impossible, so if you pay two hundred dollars for example, they will reduce torture from two hours to an hour and forty-five minutes, and so on, but this is not fixed, because every officer or a policeman has his dealing price. The police are defined by the severity and brutality they use.”



Iraqi Arab poet writes a poem in a praise of Assad then he was released!



The poet Fared Makhmouri added:
“Ironically, a known Iraqi Arab poet, who will remain anonymous, was also detained with us, but he wrote a poem praising President Bashar al-Assad, and then handed it to the intelligence officer. He was very quickly separated from us and freed “.

So, this is the system of protection and defence that the regime boasts about when describing itself! Using this inhumane destructive mentality it wants to achieve its supposed national goals, while at the same time imprisoning its own people, and fighting against humanity.



Abdulwahab Talabani

10 January 2010

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