By AFP
December 15, 2024
Freed Syrian prisoner Ghazi Mohammed al-Mohammed, 39, with his mother Fatima Abd al-Ghany -- 'It's like he's not my son' anymore, she says - Copyright AFP OZAN KOSE
Anne Chaon
The Syrian military intelligence officers who detained Ghazi Mohammed al-Mohammed told him to forget his name and who he was.
They took away his papers, he said, and told him: “Now you’re number 3006.”
For five and a half months Mohammed languished in one of president Bashar al-Assad’s jails, losing 40 kilograms (88 pounds), all the while under the threat of imminent execution.
Since Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad’s paranoid and brutal government one week ago, numerous ex-prisoners like Mohammed are shedding light on the depths of the despair visited upon Syria’s people over the past decades.
Mohammed, an emaciated man propped up on cushions in front of the stove in Sarmada, near Aleppo in northwestern Syria, is a shadow of his former self.
The 39-year-old swears he was never involved in politics in Syria, that he is a simple merchant trying to make a living along with his brothers.
He was seized on a brief business trip to Damascus, and plunged into a living hell.
“The moment comes when you lose all hope,” said Mohammed, his beard and dark hair closely cropped.
“Towards the end I just wanted to die, waiting for when they would execute us. I was almost happy, as it would mean my suffering was over.”
It was the mukhabarat, the omnipotent intelligence henchmen and enforcers of Assad rule, who seized him when he visited the capital.
They took him away, hands clamped behind his back, along with one of his friends, a doctor.
“That was five and a half months ago,” Mohammed told AFP.
He doesn’t know why he was arrested, but thinks it may have been because he comes from the northwestern province of Idlib, heartland of the rebels whose lightning push south forced Assad to flee on December 8.
Manacled and blindfolded, Mohammed was taken to a detention centre in the upscale Mazzeh district of Damascus, home to embassies, United Nations offices and security headquarters.
They took him deep into a building, and it was there that the blows began.
– Hung by his wrists –
For the first few days, he was hung by his wrists from a bar high up in a cell, his feet unable to touch the floor. Then he was lowered so at least he could touch the ground.
Mohammed was beaten and fed practically nothing. His only contact was with the jailers.
“They told me to confess that my brother had joined the rebels,” he said.
“To be honest, I told them what they wanted to hear, even though my brother’s a businessman who runs an aid organisation here in Sarmada.”
He said he could hear the cries of women and children being tortured in front of loved ones to make them confess.
After a month or so, Mohammed was handed over to military intelligence, the ones who told him that, from then on, he would only be a number.
He was thrown into a narrow cell about two metres (six feet) long, roughly the length of a man, and 1.2 metres wide. An overhead skylight provided the only source of light.
The cell had no electricity, no water, and when he needed the toilet, he said the guards forced him to go there naked, bent over and with his eyes fixed on the floor.
They taunted him, saying he would be executed.
“You’ll have your throat slit like a sheep. Unless you prefer hanging by the legs? Or being impaled?”
Towards the end, Mohammed was of course unaware of what was happening on the outside, of the rapid 11-day rebel advance from the north as Assad’s forces abandoned their tanks and other equipment.
– ‘He has changed’ –
“One night they brought us out of the cells and lined us all up in the corridor, tied to each other. Two rows of 14 prisoners. We could see each other for the first time, and assumed we were going to die,” he said.
They were kept standing there for about an hour, before being shoved back into random cells.
“I called out that I was sick and need the toilet, but nobody came,” Mohammed said.
“Then we heard the sound of helicopters landing and taking off again, I suppose to take away the officers.”
A few hours later the cell doors were broken open and rebels freed them.
“I saw the fighters appear. I thought I was dreaming.”
As Mohammed told his story, his 75-year-old mother sat beside him and nuzzled his anorak. Not once did she take her eyes off her son.
Nobody ever told her he had been arrested. He simply disappeared.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances in Syria.
Unlike many, Mohammed was lucky. He came back.
“But he has changed,” his mother Fatima Abd al-Ghany said. “When I look at him, it’s like he’s not my son.”
He has nightmares, she said, despite his denials.
“I hope they’re brought to justice,” Mohammed said of his captors. He’s sure he can identify three of them.
Syrian national living in S.C. charged with torturing dissidents at Damascus prison in 2000s
An interior view as teams carry out investigation in secret compartments at Sednaya Prison after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Syria on December 10, 2024. Syrian rescuers searched the Sednaya jail, synonymous with the worst atrocities of ousted president Bashar al-Assad's rule. On Thursday, the United States charged a Syrian national on accusations of torturing detainees at the Damascus Central Prison.
Photo by Asaad al-Asaad/UPi | License Photo
Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A former Syrian government official residing in South Carolina has been charged with torturing political dissidents at a Damascus prison he oversaw in the mid-2000s.
Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 72, of Lexington, S.C., was originally indicted with immigration fraud charges in August on accusations of lying about his employment at the Damascus Central Prison when applying for U.S. citizenship in 2023, as well as when applying for a visa to enter the country in 2020, to become a permanent resident and to obtain a green card.
The indictment announced Thursday adds three counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture to his two original immigration offense-related charges.
"The allegations in this superseding indictment of grave human rights abuses are chilling. Our country will not be a safe harbor for those accused of committing atrocities abroad," U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada for the Central District of California said in a statement.
According to the superseding indictment, Alsheikh held a variety of positions in the Syrian state security apparatus, including being the head of the Damascus Central Prison, commonly known as Adra Prison, from about 2005 through 2008.
Federal prosecutors allege that in his role at the prison he directed his employees to "inflict, and was sometimes personally involved in inflicting, severe physical and mental pain and suffering on political and other prisoners," the Justice Department said in the release announcing the superseding indictment.
The indictment states that Alsheikh allegedly ordered some prisoners to be held in Adra facility's so-called punishment wing, where detainees were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms extended and forced to endure a device known as the Flying Carpet.
According to Amnesty International, the Flying Carpet device consists of two wooden boards on which a prisoner is strapped, with their upper body on one board and their lower body on the other. The boards, which are hinged together, are folded on top of one another, forcibly pushing the prisoner's straightened legs toward their chest.
The Justice Department said this causes "excruciating pain and sometimes resulting in fractured spines."
If convicted, Alsheikh faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the torture-related charges and a maximum of 10 years for each of the immigration-related counts.
"The defendant is accused of torturing prisoners in Syria almost 20 years ago, and today, we are one step closer to holding him accountable for those heinous crimes. The United States will never be a safe haven for those who commit human rights abuses abroad," said Special Agent in Charge Eddy Wang of the Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles Field office.
The indictment is the second the United States has filed against Syrian officials this week after the fall of the dictator government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
On Monday, an indictment was unsealed, charging two top Syrian officials on accusations of abusing political dissidents at a detention facility at Mezzeh Military Airport, near the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Unlike Alsheikh, Syrian Air Force Intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, remain at large.
The indictments come after the government of Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since the 1970s, fell last week to a fast-moving insurgency, effectively ending the country's civil war, which began in 2011.
Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A former Syrian government official residing in South Carolina has been charged with torturing political dissidents at a Damascus prison he oversaw in the mid-2000s.
Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 72, of Lexington, S.C., was originally indicted with immigration fraud charges in August on accusations of lying about his employment at the Damascus Central Prison when applying for U.S. citizenship in 2023, as well as when applying for a visa to enter the country in 2020, to become a permanent resident and to obtain a green card.
The indictment announced Thursday adds three counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture to his two original immigration offense-related charges.
"The allegations in this superseding indictment of grave human rights abuses are chilling. Our country will not be a safe harbor for those accused of committing atrocities abroad," U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada for the Central District of California said in a statement.
According to the superseding indictment, Alsheikh held a variety of positions in the Syrian state security apparatus, including being the head of the Damascus Central Prison, commonly known as Adra Prison, from about 2005 through 2008.
Federal prosecutors allege that in his role at the prison he directed his employees to "inflict, and was sometimes personally involved in inflicting, severe physical and mental pain and suffering on political and other prisoners," the Justice Department said in the release announcing the superseding indictment.
The indictment states that Alsheikh allegedly ordered some prisoners to be held in Adra facility's so-called punishment wing, where detainees were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms extended and forced to endure a device known as the Flying Carpet.
According to Amnesty International, the Flying Carpet device consists of two wooden boards on which a prisoner is strapped, with their upper body on one board and their lower body on the other. The boards, which are hinged together, are folded on top of one another, forcibly pushing the prisoner's straightened legs toward their chest.
The Justice Department said this causes "excruciating pain and sometimes resulting in fractured spines."
If convicted, Alsheikh faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the torture-related charges and a maximum of 10 years for each of the immigration-related counts.
"The defendant is accused of torturing prisoners in Syria almost 20 years ago, and today, we are one step closer to holding him accountable for those heinous crimes. The United States will never be a safe haven for those who commit human rights abuses abroad," said Special Agent in Charge Eddy Wang of the Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles Field office.
The indictment is the second the United States has filed against Syrian officials this week after the fall of the dictator government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
On Monday, an indictment was unsealed, charging two top Syrian officials on accusations of abusing political dissidents at a detention facility at Mezzeh Military Airport, near the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Unlike Alsheikh, Syrian Air Force Intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, remain at large.
The indictments come after the government of Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since the 1970s, fell last week to a fast-moving insurgency, effectively ending the country's civil war, which began in 2011.
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