“This is where they smashed my skull”, he says, making me feel the back of his head. You can clearly feel the injury. Then he shows me one of his arms, pointing out a long scar.
The man sitting opposite of me is Abdul Hamid, who was ‘disappeared’ and tortured by the Syrian government for one and a half years. “I’m 28 years old, but I feel like I’m 70”, he says.
“We kept his body in the Fridge for 5 days because we couldn’t leave the house”
The Arab Spring
Abdul grew up in the Syrian city of Homs. “I led a fairly good life – until in 2011, the war broke out.”
“Assad could do whatever he wanted. They could take people and change the laws; there were no morales from the government’s side.” As in many Arab countries, the authoritarian rule was what brought people onto the streets in the Arab Spring. Abdul himself participated in the protests, which were brutally dispersed by government forces, causing many casualties amongst the demonstrators. “We were marching in the streets, and suddenly the police showed up. We all started running, but the police had come with an armored car with a machine gun and simply opened fire into the crowd. My friend was shot in the back, three times, and later died. We kept his body in the fridge for 5 days because we couldn’t leave the house due to the fighting.”
It was also during the Arab Spring that Abdul was first detained by the Amen Alddawla, State Security. “I was walking along the street one day, and they arrested me. I was in prison for about two and a half months.”
“Behind closed doors, they’d kill oppositionists with a lethal injection”
Operating a Secret Hospital
As the fighting showed no signs of ending, Abdul, together with some of his friends who had knowledge in medicine decided to open a secret hospital under their house for wounded oppositionists. “I myself have been shot, so I know the situation” Abdul casually mentions. The secret hospital was necessary to save the lives of their friends, Abdul says: “To the media, the government said that they would also treat the opposition. But really, they would take them into the hospital and, behind closed doors, kill them with a lethal injection.” A recent trial of a Syrian doctor in Germany, accused among other things of killing at least one member of the opposition by means of a lethal injection, gives credence to this claim.
Despite them keeping their underground hospital absolutely secret, the government found out. Overnight, Abdul practically disappeared from the surface of the earth. For almost one and a half years, none of his family members or friends would hear from him, let alone know whether he was alive. He was moved through seven different prisons – most of their locations are unknown to anyone other than the government. Disease, torture and death were omnipresent in Assad’s concentration camps. “Even if I’d talk for 24 hours straight, I cannot describe the horror of the secret prisons.”
“It was better than the others. Here, they’d only beat, not kill you”
The First Prison
“The first prison they brought me to was Al Amen al siyasi, operated by the ‘Political Security’. I stayed there for two weeks. Here, they’d only beat you and swear at you, but they didn’t kill people, and if someone got sick they’d bring them to the doctor. It was a lot better than the later prisons.
People knew that the prison existed, and I know exactly where it is. But no outsider would find out who was in there. If they asked, they would likely be killed.
They interrogated me, beat me with plastic sticks on my back and my legs, and every time I would repeat that I had done nothing, they’d continue beating and kicking me.
Eventually, during one interrogation, the man beating me said: ‘if you haven’t done anything, then why does Al amen al askary want you?’
“He hit me on the head, so that the blood was running down my face. ‘The next one will kill you’, he warned.”
Al Amen al Askary
Al amen al askary, known as 261, was the prison they brought me after spending two weeks in Al Amen alsiasi. Like the previous one, 261 is located in Homs. It was during my three months in this prison that they broke my skull.
We had interrogations every day, they would hang you on the wall, with your hands tied together behind you, and beat you with a whip. To the interrogators and the guards, we weren’t people; to them we were like ants, and they could do whatever they wanted with us. If they were bored, they’d kill people without the blink of an eye.
One day they brought me to the interrogation, blindfolded and stripped completely. The interrogator told me to wait for a minute, then stepped outside the room to take a phone call. I heard him talk in a very aggravated way. I caught: ‘I am not free right now, I’m busy – there’s one with me’. After he hung up, he said to me: ‘you’re lucky. My wife just called me; she was very nice to me, which made me happy. Come back in two days.’ And he let me go.
Two days later, there was a new interrogator. He hung me onto the wall and beat me with a whip. He asked me: ‘why did you fight us?’ and I always responded that I hadn’t fought against them, because I had only helped people who had been wounded. After staying silent for a whole week, I got my head smashed in. For three whole days I couldn’t do absolutely anything. After three days they took me again, and the interrogator said: ‘you will speak, or you will die.’ He hit me on the head twice, so hard that blood was running down my face. ‘The third one will kill you’, he warned. That is when I gave up resisting. I said: ‘I will tell you whatever you want. You can write down that I am Osama Bin Laden if you want to, no problem.’
“I saw a man whose leg was being eaten from the inside by worms. Every day, around 100 people died.”
215: Hell on Earth
After 261, they transferred me to an army prison known as Al Baluna, where I would stay for three further months.
After that, they transferred me to Damascus. Prison 215, Sirriat Al Mudahama, was by far the worst. Most of the people who were brought here wouldn’t leave again; they would die here.
The prison was located two floors underground. They opened the door, told you to step inside, and you would lose your mind instantly. Every day, around 100 people died in this prison – we arrived in a group of 54 people, and after two weeks, only five of us were still alive. The only food you got was a piece of bread and a spoon of rice. There were about 2,000 people in one room, and we couldn’t do anything – we couldn’t sleep, we couldn’t move.
The smell in the prison was unbearable to an extent that the toilets smelled like flowers to us. The guards by the door of the prison wore gas masks and full protective suits, and the walls were covered in a sort of oily slime. It was also always much too warm inside, which made it even more unbearable. If somebody had to pee, you couldn’t do anything but watch it slowly flow towards you.
Most people gave up immediately when they came to 215. But I didn’t want to die, and firmly tried to stay alive. I knew that the key to staying alive was to stay as clean as possible. In this prison, everybody had tens of thousands of lice living on them. From a conversation, I learned that cockroaches eat the lice – so I found a corner that was full of cockroaches, and offered to sleep there, which nobody else wanted to. I got used to the cockroaches; they were the lesser evil. When I’d open my eyes in the morning, I couldn’t see anything because of all the insects – but no problem, I’d just wipe them off with my hand and start the day. That way, I would stay as clean and healthy as possible.
All the people in the prisons are just meat and bones, squatting in rows. I saw a man whose leg was being eaten from the inside by worms; he couldn’t do anything but sit and watch.
In 215, you have 10 seconds to go to the toilet, because there are only five toilets for 5,000 people. If you weren’t done after 10 seconds, they (the other prison inmates who had to take care of administrative processes inside the prison) would drag you out and beat you, and then report you to the guards – who would break your neck.
We usually got water once every one or two days. I remember one man who completely lost control when he was brought into the prison. He sat down, shivering and weeping, and didn’t receive any food or water for three days, until he died. Most people in 215 couldn’t walk or talk, only crawl. The people you see in the news from famine-struck areas are a lot better off than them.
Every morning, you’d wake up to find that someone near you had died. And you wouldn’t really feel sorry for them, but rather appreciate that you could now sleep on them.
One of my friends died while we were in the prison. Before, he was a strong man, but when I found him again in the prison he was only skin and bones; he weighed only 30kg, and was covered in skin diseases. I asked him: ‘who are you?’ and he said ‘You forgot about me?’ ‘No, I don’t know you!’ He started crying, but without tears, because there was no water in his body. ‘I’m Yarum’, he said. When I realized who he was, I wanted to hug him, but couldn’t properly, because he was too fragile. Yarum was imprisoned because he had sent a message saying ‘I hope they will kill Bashar Al Assad soon’ to a friend.”
“They gave me a paper and let me leave”
(Relative) Freedom
After being relocated three more times, the government struck a prisoner exchange deal with the rebels. Abdul’s family had payed to get his name onto the list. He was transferred one last time – to Adra Al Markazi, a civil prison. “This is the type of prison that they show to the UN investigators and to the rest of the world. Then, one day, they simply gave me a piece of paper and let me leave.” Even after that, he had very few rights – for example, he was barred from buying or selling property, and he had a set area in which he was allowed to live. And of course, he wasn’t allowed to leave Syria.
During that time, Abdul went back to university and finished studying. He got his degree in law, and then started thinking about a solution to his situation.
“You wouldn’t go to prison, they’d just directly cut off your head”
Fleeing through ISIS territory
“When I ‘disappeared’, ISIS wasn’t a thing, but when I left the prison, it was one of the main players in Syria”, Abdul recalls.
On his way out of the country, he crossed through and lived in ISIS-controlled territory for a while. “In ISIS territory, life is almost normal. No bombs, no war. There are open shops, you can sit outside, grill some meat. All the Russian bombs fall into the rebel-held territory.” Though on the surface life seemed to be more or less normal, overall, an atmosphere of fear prevailed. “If you made any mistake, you wouldn’t go to prison – they’d just directly cut off your head”. If a woman was seen walking the streets without her Burqa, she and her entire family would be brought to prison. You were also not allowed to wear Jeans.
“Throughout the entire city, there were checkpoints set up by ISIS. Most of the people working there were kids, 14 or 15 years old; and they could straight up kill a 50 year old man if they felt like it. Saying something that may be an insult towards Allah was enough to be killed.”
ISIS had full control over the city of Al Raqa. If someone wanted to open a shop, they’d have to pay a tax to ISIS, while also paying rent to the owner of the property.
“On the streets, there is a fake friendliness towards ISIS, but as soon as the doors are closed, people start thinking about how to leave. Most of them can’t go though, because they don’t have enough money to get to Turkey and then Europe.”
But Abdul was eventually able to leave Syria, travel through Turkey, southeast Europe and into Germany.
Abdul has experienced worse than most of us ever will; he went through hell on earth and only survived thanks to his incredible willpower, cleverness and also a good portion of luck. But alone in Syria, hundreds of thousands are still imprisoned, being tortured, beaten and murdered. Their families don’t know about their whereabouts, don’t know whether they are alive, and have no way of finding out. Tens of thousands die, and the government let them die and often times murder them. How much longer will Al-Assad be allowed to massacre his own people before the rest of the world does something against it?
The information from the interview with Abdul is in line with reports & publications from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others and some of the locations of secret prisons have been identified.
