After years of silence, Syria opens detention facilities, allowing the public to witness the horrors inflicted during Bashar Assad's regime. Former detainees share their harrowing stories of torture, brutality, and disappearances, revealing the systematic oppression that silenced a nation.
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.It was systematic and well-organized, growing to 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. 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. Recently, 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
SYRIA TORTURE BASHAR ASSAD HUMAN RIGHTS DETENTION FACILITIES
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