‘MA’ tells of rape, torture and malnutrition in Assad’s torture network Damascus – George Al Shami Young Syrians detained by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime suffer “methodical torture and organised terror,” according to one teenager speaking exclusively to Arabstoday. The young man, known as “MA,” revealed dire humanitarian conditions as well as the use of several internationally condemned torture practices.
“Detainees are subjected to methodical torture and organised terror free from human urges,” MAs said. “They suffer from vicious beatings and burns, fractures to the ribs and limbs. Some die from torture.”
“Four people were killed during the short period I was there and those who survived told me the jailers seemed to enjoy the torture sessions and laughed and joked throughout.”
MA told of how he was tied to a cross, electrocuted and had his fingernails pulled out.
“Detainees are sometimes raped or forced to rape one another,” he said.
Prisoners are also forced to deify President Assad and repeat phrases such as: “There is no god but Bashar.”
MA painted a similarly grim picture of humanitarian conditions within the network of regime prisons and torture centres.
“Health conditions are seriously dire,” he said, claiming scores of prisoners suffered from lung diseases, malnourishment and lack of oxygen. “Another young guy inside told me that 60 prisoners died in the 20 days after his arrest – a rate of three a day.”
Cells were no bigger than 36 metres-square and held some 170 prisoners in tiny, confined spaces.
“Detainees are given one meal a day, but others have told me there was sometimes none to go around. You get given soup [cold, obviously] with some morsels of bread and an egg between three people,” MA told Arabstoday.
International human rights organisations have reported that over a million Syrians have been detained since the start of the revolution in March 2011. Over 200,000 detainees are currently being held in a nationwide network of prisons and torture centres, reports suggest.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has issued a report exposing the endemic use of torture practiced by regime forces in these facilities.
The network says 1,215 Syrians have died from torture since the start of the revolution, including 17 women, 34 children and 23 elderly men.
According to the same report, 194,000 people are still being detained, including 4,500 women and 9,000 minors.
The Network report details torture practices including the so-called “ghost position” in which prisoners are hung by their hands from the ceiling, with their toes just touching the ground. Victims of torture have been forced to have limbs amputated as a result.
Regime forces also use electrocution, beatings with rods and electric cables, pulling out fingernails and hair, ripping out flesh with metal pincers, beating genitalia and burning with acid.
Rape, deprivation of basic amenities and food are also routine, the report said.
Many former detainees claimed being raped or forced to rape a fellow inmate was the hardest form of torture they encountered.
Many testimonies mention constant threats of death, insults to the detainee's family and orders to kneel before photographs of Bashar al-Assad.