Rats try to eat inmates’ bodies… Man who spent 3.5 years in a Syrian “torture prison” tells of his “hellish days

He was about to untie his blanket and hang himself…

In a 2-square-meter cell block, six prisoners were housed and tortured in turn. Some were hung from the ceiling by their hands and had to stand on their toes for three to four hours, while others had to endure whipping while their hands and feet were bound.”

Mr. Bassel, 38, a native of Damascus, the Syrian capital, was released from Adra prison in the suburbs of Damascus for the first time in three and a half years following the fall of the Assad regime on December 8.

Mr. Bassel, a pharmacist, had been providing medicines and other supplies to refugee shelters in Damascus.

A closed school building was being used as a shelter, where refugees from all over Syria were huddled together. In addition to nearby volunteers like Mr. Bassel, foreign humanitarian aid groups and rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army, provided support.

However, the government viewed these activities as problematic, and Mr. Bassel was arrested on charges of “providing financial support to terrorists. After moving from one detention center to another, he was sentenced to 21 years and 6 months in prison in 2021, and was held in Adra prison for about 3.5 years until his release on December 8, 2021.

Violence was a daily occurrence. We knew that if we resisted, we would be punished even more severely. We just had to endure it quietly.

As a pharmacist himself, Bassel sometimes treated the injuries and illnesses of other inmates in the prison infirmary. Most of the torture injuries were left untreated, but inmates who were unconscious or so badly injured that they could not walk were brought to the infirmary.

On a daily basis, prisoners with all kinds of symptoms were treated. The most egregious cases were those who had attempted suicide.

Many attempted to take their lives by untying blankets, stringing them up, and hanging themselves. No one can afford to dream of the fall of the Assad regime. They were all overcome with despair.”

Mr. Bassel himself said that he had contemplated suicide many times. In Islam, however, it is believed that “those who commit suicide will burn in the fires of hell. For Mr. Bassel, the fear of going to hell was greater than the fear of what lay ahead.

Rats try to eat inmates…

‘Normally, they stay in a 30-square-meter room, 10 meters wide and 3 meters deep. The original capacity was 32 inmates, but 80 were crammed in there. They sleep on cold concrete with blankets and towels that each of them procured.”

In order to contact his family outside the prison, Mr. Bassel paid a hefty bribe to a guard to obtain a cell phone. However, another guard found him using that cell phone, and he was taken to solitary confinement.

The cell was about 1 tatami mat, 2 meters wide and 1 meter deep. It has no window and no bedding. Even though it was a solitary confinement cell, there were not enough rooms for the number of inmates, so six people were housed in that one tatami space.

There was a hole in the room, and they had to do their business in front of the other inmates. They were not allowed to wash their hands or take showers.

Meals were served once a day in an empty bottle that used to contain dish detergent, with rotten boiled eggs, barley, yogurt, and other random items.

There were rats in the room, and when the rats became hungry, they would sometimes try to eat the inmates. In order to satisfy the rats’ hunger, the inmates had to share some of the food they were given.

It was almost suicidal for six people to live in that small room on a summer day when the temperature rose to nearly 40 degrees Celsius. It was hot and humid, and we didn’t have enough water, so the inmates were all very tired.

Mr. Bacel spent a total of 10 days in this “cell” in the summer and five days in the winter. In his cell was a 70-year-old man who had been in the prison for 44 years. The youngest was a boy only 10 years old.

The guard says, “Give me my prison clothes.”

Mr. Bassel was subjected to two main types of torture: one, called “shabaha” in Arabic, in which he was kept on his toes, his hands suspended from the ceiling, and subjected to violence for three to four hours.

The other is called “wheel. In this torture, the prisoners’ hands are tied behind their backs, their bodies are folded in half, and they are fixed in the part of a car tire that contains the wheel, where they are whipped for about 20 minutes.

What did Mr. Bassel think when he was released from the hard days in prison?

I still think I am dreaming,” he said. When I was in there, I couldn’t imagine the fall of the Assad regime. I had already given up on life when I was sentenced to 21 and a half years in prison. As long as my wife and children were safe, I didn’t care what happened to them. I thought I was going to die here.”

On December 8, rebel forces, including the Sunni-led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Free Syrian Army, stormed the prison, detaining guards and freeing inmates.

I was in the infirmary at the time. I was in the infirmary when I heard a voice outside shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great). Then the guards came and said, ‘Give us our prison uniforms. They were impersonating prisoners and trying to escape custody.

The guards were later detained by the rebels, who became suspicious of the ill-fitting prison uniforms they were wearing.

The guards were later detained by the rebels after they were found to be wearing ill-fitting prison uniforms. I wish I could offer support to those who have suffered the same fate as I have.”