Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad

Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad
Abdullah Zahra demonstrates how he was tortured in a cell at Branch 215, a detention facility run by military intelligence during Bashar Assad's regime, in Damascus, Syria. (AP)
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Updated 07 January 2025
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Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad

Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad
  • Activists and rights groups say the brutality was systematic and well-organized, growing to more than 100 detention facilities where torture, sexual violence and mass executions were rampant

DAMASCUS: Handcuffed and squatting on the floor, Abdullah Zahra saw smoke rising from his cellmate’s flesh as his torturers gave him electric shocks.
Then it was Zahra’s turn. They hanged the 20-year-old university student from his wrists until his toes barely touched the floor and electrocuted and beat him for two hours. They made his father watch and taunted him about his son’s torment.
That was 2012, and the entire security apparatus of Syria’s then-President Bashar Assad was deployed to crush the protests that had arisen against his rule.
With Assad’s fall a month ago, the machinery of death that he ran is starting to come out into the open.
It was systematic and well-organized, growing to more than 100 detention facilities where torture, brutality, sexual violence and mass executions were rampant, according to activists, rights group and former prisoners. Security agents spared no one, not even Assad’s own soldiers. Young men and women were detained for simply living in districts where protests were held.
As tens of thousands disappeared over more than a decade, a blanket of fear kept the Syrian population silent. People rarely told anyone that a loved one had vanished for fear they too could be reported to security agencies.
Now, everyone is talking. The insurgents who swept Assad out of power opened detention facilities, releasing prisoners and allowing the public to bear witness. Crowds swarmed, searching for answers, bodies of their loved ones, and ways to heal.
The Associated Press visited seven of these facilities in Damascus and spoke to nine former detainees, some released on Dec. 8, the day Assad was ousted. Some details of the accounts by those who spoke to the AP could not be independently confirmed, but they matched past reports by former detainees to human rights groups.
Days after Assad’s fall, Zahra – now 33 — came to visit Branch 215, a detention facility run by military intelligence in Damascus where he was held for two months. In an underground dungeon, he stepped into the windowless, 4-by-4-meter (yard) cell where he says he was held with 100 other inmates.
Each man was allowed a floor tile to squat on, Zahra said. When ventilators weren’t running — either intentionally or because of a power failure — some suffocated. Men went mad; torture wounds festered. When a cellmate died, they stowed his body next to the cell’s toilet until jailers came to collect corpses, Zahra said.
“Death was the least bad thing,” he said. “We reached a place where death was easier than staying here for one minute.”
Assad’s system of repression grew as civil war raged
Zahra was arrested along with his father after security agents killed one of his brothers, a well-known anti-Assad graffiti artist. After they were released, Zahra fled to opposition-held areas. Within a few months, security agents returned and dragged off 13 of his male relatives, including a younger brother and, again, his father.
They were brought to Branch 215. All were tortured and killed. Zahra later recognized their bodies among photos leaked by a defector that showed the corpses of thousands killed while in detention. Their bodies were never recovered, and how and when they died is unknown.
Rights groups estimate at least 150,000 people went missing after anti-government protests began in 2011, most vanishing into Assad’s prison network. Many of them were killed, either in mass executions or from torture and prison conditions. The exact number remains unknown.
Even before the uprising, Assad had ruled with an iron fist. But as peaceful protests turned into a full-fledged civil war that would last 14 years, Assad rapidly expanded his system of repression.
New detention facilities sprung up in security compounds, military airports and under buildings — all run by military, security and intelligence agencies.
Touring the site of his torture and detention, Zahra hoped to find some sign of his lost relatives. But there was nothing. At home, his aunt, Rajaa Zahra, saw the pictures of her killed children for the first time. She had refused to look at the leaked photos before. She lost three of her six sons in Branch 215 and a fourth was killed at a protest. Her brother, she said, had three sons, now he has only one.
“They were hoping to finish off all the young men of the country.”
Syrians were tortured with ‘the tire’ and ‘magic carpet’
The Assad regime’s tortures had names.
One was called the “magic carpet,” where a detainee was strapped to a hinged wooden plank that bends in half, folding his head to his feet, which are then beaten.
Abdul-Karim Hajjeko said he endured this five times. His torturers stomped on his back during interrogations at the Criminal Security branch, and his vertebrae are still broken.
“My screams would go to heaven. Once a doctor came down from the fourth floor (to the ground floor) because of my screams,” he said.
He was also put in “the tire.” His legs were bent inside a car tire as interrogators beat his back and feet with a plastic baton. When they were done, he said, a guard ordered him to kiss the tire and thank it for teaching him “how to behave.” Hajjeko was later taken to the notorious Saydnaya Prison, where he was held for six years.
Many prisoners said the tire was inflicted for rule violations — like making noise, raising one’s head in front of guards, or praying – or for no reason at all.
Mahmoud Abdulbaki, a non-commissioned air force officer who defected from service, was put in the tire during detention at a military police facility. They forced him to count the lashes — up to 200 — and if he made a mistake, the torturer would start over.
“People’s hearts stopped following a beating,” the 37-year-old said.
He was later held at Saydnaya, where he said guards would terrorize inmates by rolling a tire down the corridor lined with cells and beat on the bars with their batons. Wherever it stopped, the entire cell would be subjected to the tire.
Altogether, Abdulbaki spent nearly six years in prison over different periods. He was among those freed on the day Assad fled Syria.
Saleh Turki Yahia said a cellmate died nearly every day during the seven months in 2012 he was held at the Palestine Branch, a detention facility run by the General Intelligence Agency.
He recounted how one man bled in the cell for days after returning from a torture session where interrogators rammed a pipe into him. When the inmates tried to move him, “all his fluids poured out from his backside. The wound opened from the back, and he died,” he said.
Yahya said he was given electric shocks, hanged from his wrists, beaten on his feet. He lost half his body weight and nearly tore his own skin scratching from scabies.
“They broke us,” he said, breaking into tears. “Look at Syria, it is all old men ... A whole generation is destroyed.”
But with Assad gone, he was back visiting the Palestine Branch.
“I came to express myself. I want to tell.”
The mounting evidence will be used in trials
Torture continued up to the end of Assad’s rule.
Rasha Barakat, 34, said she and her sister were detained in March from their homes in Saqba, a town outside Damascus.
Inside a security branch, she was led past her husband, who had been arrested hours earlier and was being interrogated. He was kneeling on the floor, his face green, she said. It was her last brief glimpse of him: He died in custody.
During her own hours-long interrogation, she said, security agents threatened to bring in her sons, 5- and 7-years-old, if she didn’t confess. She was beaten. Female security agents stripped her and poured cold water on her, leaving her shivering naked for two hours. She spent eight days in isolation, hearing beatings nearby.
Eventually she was taken to Adra, Damascus’ central prison, tried and sentenced to five years for supporting rebel groups, charges she said were made up.
There she stayed until insurgents broke into Adra in December and told her she was free. An estimated 30,000 prisoners were released as fighters opened up prisons during their march to Damascus.
Barakat said she is happy to see her kids again. But “I am destroyed psychologically … Something is missing. It is hard to keep going.”
Now comes the monumental task of accounting for the missing and compiling evidence that could one day be used to prosecute Assad’s officials, whether by Syrian or international courts.
Hundreds of thousands of documents remain scattered through the former detention facilities, many labeled classified, in storage rooms commonly underground. Some seen by the AP included transcripts of phone conversations, even between military officers; intelligence files on activists; and a list of hundreds of prisoners killed in detention.
Shadi Haroun, who spent 10 years imprisoned, has been charting Assad’s prison structure and documenting former detainees’ experiences from exile in Turkiye. After Assad’s fall, he rushed back to Syria and toured detention sites.
The documents, he said, show the bureaucracy behind the killings. “They know what they are doing, it is organized.”
Civil defense workers are tracking down mass graves where tens of thousands are believed to be buried. At least 10 have been identified around Damascus, mostly from residents’ reports, and five others elsewhere around the country. Authorities say they are not ready to open them.
A UN body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism has offered to help Syria’s new interim administration in collecting, organizing and analyzing all the material. Since 2011, it has been compiling evidence and supporting investigations in over 200 criminal cases against figures in Assad’s government.
Robert Petit, director of the UN body, said the task is so enormous, no one entity can do it alone. The priority would be to identify the architects of the brutality.
Many want answers now.
Officials cannot just declare that the missing are presumed dead, said Wafaa Mustafa, a Syrian journalist, whose father was detained and killed 12 years ago.
“No one gets to tell the families what happened without evidence, without search, without work.”


US military says airstrike in Syria kills leader of Al-Qaeda affiliate Hurras al-Din

US military says airstrike in Syria kills leader of Al-Qaeda affiliate Hurras al-Din
Updated 13 sec ago
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US military says airstrike in Syria kills leader of Al-Qaeda affiliate Hurras al-Din

US military says airstrike in Syria kills leader of Al-Qaeda affiliate Hurras al-Din

RIYADH: A senior official of an Al-Qaeda affiliate was killed during an airstrike by American forces in northwest Syria, the US Central Command, or Centcom said on Sunday.

In a statement posted on the X platform, CENTCOM said the "precision airstrike" targeted and killed "a senior finance and logistics official in the terrorist organization Hurras al-Din (HaD), an Al-Qaeda affiliate."

It said the operation "is part of CENTCOM's ongoing commitment, along with partners in the region, to disrupt and degrade efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks" against civilians and military personnel from the US and its allies.

"We will continue to relentlessly pursue terrorists in order to defend our homeland, and US, allied, and partner personnel in the region,” the statement quoted Centcom chief Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla as saying.

Last January 30 in Syria, a Hurras al-Din leader was also reported killed in a US military airstrike that targetted his vehicle on a highway near the village of Batabo in northwest Syria.

The US military has around 900 troops in Syria as part of the international coalition against the Daesh group. The coalition was established in 2014 to help combat the armed group, which had taken over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria.

(With AFP)

 

 


Turkish opposition party delegation meets with Kurdish leader in Iraq as part of PKK peace efforts

Turkish opposition party delegation meets with Kurdish leader in Iraq as part of PKK peace efforts
Updated 17 February 2025
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Turkish opposition party delegation meets with Kurdish leader in Iraq as part of PKK peace efforts

Turkish opposition party delegation meets with Kurdish leader in Iraq as part of PKK peace efforts
  • Ocalan, 75, founded the PKK, in 1978, which began an armed insurrection for an autonomous Kurdish state in Turkiye’s southeast in 1984, costing tens of thousands of lives

BAGHDAD: A Turkish opposition party delegation arrived in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region Sunday against the backdrop of peace efforts between Ankara and a banned Kurdish separatist movement in Turkiye.
The delegation led by Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, two senior officials with the pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, in Turkiye, met with Masoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party — the dominant Kurdish party in Iraq — in Irbil Sunday.
Barzani’s office said in a statement that they discussed “the peace process in Turkiye” and that the Turkish delegation conveyed a message from Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of Turkiye’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
Barzani “stressed the need for all parties to intensify their efforts and endeavors to enable the peace process to achieve the desired results” and reiterated “his full readiness to provide assistance and support to the peace process in Turkiye and make it a success,” the statement said.
The DEM party has long pressed for greater democracy in Turkiye and rights for the country’s Kurdish population, and also to improve conditions for the imprisoned Ocalan.
Ocalan, 75, founded the PKK, in 1978, which began an armed insurrection for an autonomous Kurdish state in Turkiye’s southeast in 1984, costing tens of thousands of lives. The group is considered a terrorist organization by Turkiye and its Western allies. The central Iraqi government in Baghdad announced a ban on the group, which maintains bases in northern Iraq, last year.
Captured in 1999 and convicted of treason, Ocalan has been serving a life sentence on Imrali island in the Marmara Sea.
The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has traditionally had an antagonistic relationship with the left-wing DEM party, frequently ousting its elected officials on charges of ties to the PKK and replacing them with state appointed officials.
However, this icy relationship began thawing last October, when Erdogan’s coalition partner, far-right nationalist politician Devlet Bahceli suggested that Ocalan could be granted parole, if his group renounces violence and disbands.
The peace effort comes at a time when Erdogan may need support from the DEM party in parliament to enact a new constitution that could allow him to stay in power for unlimited terms.
The Turkish Constitution doesn’t allow Erdogan, who has been in power since 2003 as prime minister and later as president, to run for office again unless an early election is called — something that would also require the support of the pro-Kurdish party.
Even as the latest peace efforts are underway, Erdogan’s government has widened a crackdown on the opposition, arresting journalists and politicians. Several elected Kurdish mayors have been ousted from office and replaced with state appointed officials, the latest this Saturday, when the mayor of Van municipality in eastern Turkiye was removed from his post and replaced with the state-appointed governor.
Meanwhile, conflict is ongoing between Turkish-backed armed groups and Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.
Turkiye views the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed military Kurdish alliance in Syria, as an extension of the PKK. The SDF is in negotiations with the new government in Damascus following the ouster of then Syrian President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive.
While most former insurgent groups have agreed to dissolve and integrate into the new Syrian army, the SDF has refused so far.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saturday that the government would reconsider its military presence in northeastern Syria if that country’s new leaders eliminate the presence of the PKK in the area. Also Saturday, Kurds in northeastern Syria staged a mass protest to demand Ocalan’s release.
 

 


Syria’s new leader visits former Assad strongholds

Syria’s new leader visits former Assad strongholds
Updated 17 February 2025
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Syria’s new leader visits former Assad strongholds

Syria’s new leader visits former Assad strongholds
  • Latakia and Tartus are also home to Assad ally Russia’s only two military bases outside the former Soviet Union

DAMASCUS: Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa visited Latakia and Tartus on Sunday, his office said, making his first official trip to the coastal provinces formerly known as strongholds of ousted ruler Bashar Assad.
Sharaa met with “dignitaries and notables” during his visit, the Syrian presidency said on Telegram.
It published images of Sharaa meeting with dozens of people, some apparently religious figures, in the two provinces’ capital cities.
Earlier Sunday, Latakia province’s official Telegram channel published footage showing thousands of people gathered in the city, some taking photos, as Sharaa’s convoy passed through.
Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham led the rebel offensive that ousted Assad in December, and he was appointed interim president last month.
Assad’s hometown is located in Latakia, which along with neighboring Tartus is home to a large number of the country’s Alawite community, a branch of Shiite Islam to which Assad’s family belonged.
Assad had presented himself as a protector of minorities in multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Syria, but largely concentrated power in the hands of his fellow Alawites.
Latakia and Tartus are also home to Assad ally Russia’s only two military bases outside the former Soviet Union.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, Latakia saw violence after Assad’s fall that has since eased somewhat, though occasional attacks are still carried out on checkpoints.
State news agency SANA, citing the interior ministry, said Sunday that a security patrol had been attacked in the province, wounding two patrol members and killing a woman.
Latakia has also seen reprisals against people seen as linked to the former government, though such incidents have also decreased recently, the Britain-based Observatory added.
Security operations have previously been announced in the province in pursuit of “remnants” of the ousted government’s forces.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said that “there are still thousands of officers from the former regime present in Latakia and who haven’t settled their status” with the new authorities.
Sharaa’s visit could be a message that there is “no possibility for the regime of Bashar Assad to move in Latakia or on the Syrian coast,” he told AFP.
Despite reassurances from Syria’s new authorities that minorities will be protected, members of the Alawite community in particular fear reprisals because of the minority’s link to the Assad clan.
Sharaa’s visit followed trips to Idlib, the rebels’ former bastion, and Aleppo a day earlier.
 

 


Israel security cabinet to discuss new phase of Gaza truce after Rubio visit

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Updated 17 February 2025
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Israel security cabinet to discuss new phase of Gaza truce after Rubio visit

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
  • Netanyahu’s office said he would convene a meeting of his security cabinet on Monday to discuss phase two
  • It said the prime minister was also dispatching negotiators to Cairo Monday to discuss the “continued implementation” of phase one

JERUSALEM: Israel’s security cabinet was set to discuss on Monday the next phase of the ceasefire in Gaza, after top US diplomat Marco Rubio and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu presented a united front on their approach to Hamas and Iran.
Rubio was in Israel on his first Middle East trip as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
“Hamas cannot continue as a military or a government force... they must be eliminated,” Rubio said of the Palestinian group that fought Israel for more than 15 months in Gaza until a fragile ceasefire took effect on January 19.
Standing beside him, Netanyahu said the two allies had “a common strategy,” and that “the gates of hell will be opened” if all hostages still held by militants in Gaza are not freed.
The comments came a day after Hamas freed three Israeli hostages in exchange for 369 Palestinian prisoners — the sixth such swap under the ceasefire deal, which the United States helped mediate along with Qatar and Egypt.
Israel and Hamas have traded accusations of ceasefire violations, and adding to strain on the deal is Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take control of rubble-strewn Gaza and relocate its more than two million residents.
“We discussed Trump’s bold vision for Gaza’s future and will work to ensure that vision becomes a reality,” Netanyahu said.
The scheme that Trump outlined earlier this month as Netanyahu visited Washington lacked details, but he said it would entail moving Gazans to Jordan or Egypt.
Trump has suggested the coastal territory could be redeveloped into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Washington, Israel’s top ally and weapons supplier, says it is open to alternative proposals from Arab governments, but Rubio has said that for now, “the only plan is the Trump plan.”
However, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have rejected his proposal, and instead favor — as does much of the international community — the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Sunday said establishment of a Palestinian state was “the only guarantee” of lasting Middle East peace.
Hamas and Israel are implementing the first, 42-day phase of the ceasefire, which nearly collapsed last week.
“At any moment the fighting could resume. We hope that the calm will continue and that Egypt will pressure Israel to prevent them from restarting the war and displacing people,” said Nasser Al-Astal, 62, a retired teacher in southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis.
Since the truce began last month, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of 251 people seized in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war, 70 remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.
In a statement, Rubio condemned Hamas’s hostage-taking as “sick depravity” and called for the immediate release of all remaining captives, living and dead, particularly five Israeli-American dual nationals.
Negotiations on a second phase of the truce, aimed at securing a more lasting end to the war, could begin this week in Doha, a Hamas official and another source familiar with the talks have said.
Netanyahu’s office said he would convene a meeting of his security cabinet on Monday to discuss phase two.
It said the prime minister was also dispatching negotiators to Cairo Monday to discuss the “continued implementation” of phase one.
The team would “receive further directives for negotiations on Phase II” after the cabinet meeting, the office said.
The Gaza war triggered violent fallout throughout the Middle East, where Iran backs militant groups including in Yemen and Lebanon.
Israel fought a related war with Hamas’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah, severely weakening it.
There were also limited direct strikes by Iran and Israel against each other.
The October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,271 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
On Sunday, Hamas said an Israeli air strike killed three police officers near south Gaza’s Rafah in what the militant group called a “serious violation” of the truce.
Israel said it had struck “several armed individuals” in south Gaza.
It is at least the second Israeli air strike in Gaza since the ceasefire began.


Shipment of ‘heavy’ US-made bombs arrives in Israel

Bunker Buster bombs staged 23 March in the hangar bay aboard USS Constellation. (AFP file photo)
Bunker Buster bombs staged 23 March in the hangar bay aboard USS Constellation. (AFP file photo)
Updated 16 February 2025
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Shipment of ‘heavy’ US-made bombs arrives in Israel

Bunker Buster bombs staged 23 March in the hangar bay aboard USS Constellation. (AFP file photo)
  • The war has devastated much of Gaza, resulting in the displacement of much of its 2.4 million population
  • In response to concerns over civilian deaths, former US President Joe Biden’s administration had blocked a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, but Trump reportedly approved them after taking office

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that a shipment of “heavy” US-made bombs has arrived in Israel, as Marco Rubio began his first visit to the country as Washington’s top diplomat.
“A shipment of heavy aerial bombs recently released by the US government was received and unloaded overnight in Israel,” the ministry said in a statement, referring to MK-84 munitions recently authorized by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The munitions shipment that arrived in Israel, released by the Trump administration, represents a significant asset for the air force and the military and serves as further evidence of the strong alliance” between Israel and the US, Defense Minister Israel Katz said in the statement.
The Trump administration had earlier in February approved the sale of more than $7.4 billion in bombs, missiles, and related equipment to Israel.
The sale “improves Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats, strengthen its homeland defense, and serves as a deterrent to regional threats,” the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said at the time.
Israel launched a hugely destructive offensive against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023 in response to an attack by the Palestinian group that month.
The war has devastated much of Gaza, resulting in the displacement of much of its 2.4 million population.
A ceasefire has been in effect since Jan.19, providing for the release of hostages seized by Hamas.
In response to concerns over civilian deaths, former US President Joe Biden’s administration had blocked a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, but Trump reportedly approved them after taking office.
A former Israeli negotiator has said Israel missed two opportunities last year to secure a Gaza truce and hasten hostage releases, prompting a swift rebuttal from the premier’s office.
“In my view, we missed two opportunities to sign an agreement ... in March and July” last year, said Oren Setter, who resigned from the Israeli negotiating team in October, in remarks broadcast on Channel 12.
“We did not do everything we could to bring them back as quickly as possible.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused by opposition figures and some families of hostages of not doing enough to secure their release and torpedoing talks.
On Saturday, his office dismissed Setter’s remarks, stating that “his claims that an agreement could have been reached earlier are entirely baseless.”
“Had the prime minister not stood firm, at least half of the living hostages would not have been freed in the first phase” of an ongoing truce, the statement said.
“As repeatedly testified by senior US officials, Hamas refused to engage in negotiations for months and was the sole obstacle to a deal,” the statement added.
Setter clarified that he wanted to “speak about facts” and argued that the deaths of hostages in captivity and “unnecessary suffering” could have been avoided while still placing primary responsibility for last year’s negotiation deadlock on Hamas.