Detainee recounts horrific stories of life in Saydnaya Prison
Dozens of Syrian families waiting for buses to take the detainees out of the Saydnaya prison
DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – He keeps thinking that someone is lurking behind the door and watching him. Despite his family’s reassurance that it is just a hallucination, he would not stop insisting that he is right.
Not only that, he told his father that he suffers problems in his reproductive system that left him unable to reproduce; this was after his father told him, jokingly, that he would marry him to his cousin. He also suffers from stuttering and swelling in his entire body.
This was the case of the 31-year-old Muhammad Suleiman, a pseudonym for one of the detainees who has recently been released from Saydnaya Prison near Damascus.
He spent 11 years behind the bars in Saydnaya and Adra prisons, and was released after the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree on April 30 granting general amnesty for “terrorism crimes”.
At the time, Suleiman, a resident of Daraa, was a student at the Department of English in the Faculty of Arts at Damascus University, and lived in the dormitory.
Although he returned disfigured both psychologically and physically, his 66-year-old mother expressed her happiness for his return saying, “I am ready to serve and care for him my whole life. He is my oldest son whom they [the government] deprived me of for ten years.”
Physical torture
On September 7, 2011, the young man was in the garage of Nahir Aisha waiting for the bus to visit his married sister when he was arrested with 53 people and taken away to the Adra Prison. The garage of Nahir Aisha was considered a starting point for the protests at the time.
About the circumstances of his arrest, he said, “at first, I stayed imprisoned for 10 days in Adra Prison with three young men in a room located two floors under the ground which was not designed to fit more than one person.”
They were then transferred into a cell that contained over 50 people. “After that, they began interrogating us one by one. Each detainee was returning from the interrogation covered in blood and bruises. Here, fear and terror started getting me, and I said in my heart, ‘I will not last long. I will die, no way.’”
He recalls the moment he was interrogated with a deep breath, “while holding a chain covered in blood in his hand, the interrogator asked me in a loud voice whether I participated in the protests or not, I remained silent and surprised for a moment while contemplating what was in his hand, but I quickly returned to reality with the first blow on my fingers.”
While the former prisoner was trying to finish explaining his thought, he suddenly stopped talking and seemed to have passed out. He only returned after his mother called him and encouraged him to complete his story.
“My screams filled the place, I felt that my fingers were amputated, then the interrogator repeated his previous question, and I told him ‘no, I am just a student who wants to complete his education and does not know anything about politics,’” the young man added.
But all his pleas and attempts were unsuccessful. “With every word I uttered, I was hit by the chain in my face and kicked in the genital. After only half an hour of interrogation, I passed out. I opened my eyes to see that I was thrown completely naked in the cell.”
Saydnaya Prison
The interrogation of Suleiman lasted three days, during which the torture methods varied between electricity and foot whipping, starvation and beating, sensitive spots in particular, and insults and threats to kill him and his family. After that he did not have a choice but to confess to a crime he did not commit.
After spending two years in Adra Prison, the young man was tried and sentenced for 15 years in prison. He was later transferred to Saydnaya Prison and stayed there until the issuance of the decree.
There is still no accurate statistics for the number of the released detainees since the issuance of the decree.
Saydnaya Prison is located 30 kilometers north of Damascus. The prison is affiliated with the Syrian Ministry of Defense and is run by the Military Police.
The prison has gained a bad reputation after guards in the prison used excessive force against some detainees who staged a revolt in 2008.
The prison is comprised of two buildings and can take between 10,000 and 20,000 prisoners.
Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011, the prison has become the final destination for the those who oppose the government whether civilians or military members.
Killed under torture
According to what he told North Press, he was subjected to various torture methods for three months and was being interrogated every 20 hours for four years.
The prison “is considered a huge human rights violation, as torture is the main meal every day and you cannot hire a lawyer,” Suleiman said.
“It lacks the most basic health services. The lucky will walk out, and then they [the families] will know that he is alive, but the unlucky would die there and nobody would ever know where he was buried,” he added.
Suleiman described the prison as “brutal, as those who enter it either die or get out insane.”
“I witnessed the death of 23 prisoners, some of them died due to torture and freezing, some of them committed suicide as a result of the psychological pressure, and some of them died of heart attacks and lung or skin diseases,” Suleiman said.
Regarding the number of prisoners in Saydnaya, he said that he did not know for sure, but “I can confirm that are thousands of them, including minors.”
When they were told about a general amnesty granting them freedom, Suleiman said, “I could not believe it. I thought it was another psychological trick to break us. Even when they summoned me to complete the release papers, I was guessing that they would transfer us to another prison. I kept thinking it was a lie, until I hugged my mother.”
The young man who spent over a decade in prison, as his 70-year-old father emphasized, needs a long recovery journey so he can fit in the life that once he was deprived of.