[LINK] “Inside Syria's secret prisons”

[rfmcdonald]

I’d like to thank Facebook’s Derrick for linking to the story of imprisonment told by Dorothy Parvaz, an al-Jazeera journalist holding (among others) Canadian citizenship who was arrested on the 29th of April in Damascus to cover the Syrian protests and who was held captive in Syria and later Iran before her release earlier this month. Parvaz was lucky to be spared torture, but the people in her environment didn’t share in her good fortune. (“'We could clearly hear the interrogator pummelling his fists into his subject,' writes our correspondent” is the subtitle of her account published at al-Jazeera.)

Blindfolded, I was led to the first of my three cells - a tiny, sparse room, roughly three paces across and five length-wise. On the floor, on a ratty brown blanket, sat a young woman whose face was puffy from crying. She said she was 25 and from Damascus and indicated that she had been there for four days. She didn't know why she'd been picked up by the Mukhabarat, the Syrian intelligence service.

She said she was a shop assistant in a clothes store, and the designer stilettos that sat in the corner of the cell seemed to belie any suggestion that this was a girl who had left her house in order to participate in protests. She said she'd been speaking on her phone when she was hauled into a car, blindfolded and driven away.

She had no idea where she was, or how long she was to stay there. She had not been allowed to contact her family.

Our eyes moved to the month-long calendar etched on the wall, likely the artwork of a previous dweller. With unspoken glances, we each wondered how long she would remain there.

A man came to the door a couple of times before he took me from the cell, handcuffed and blindfolded me, and led me to what seemed like a courtyard.

He pushed me up against a wall and told me to stand there. As I did so, I heard two sets of interrogations and beatings taking place, about 10 meters away from me in either direction.

The beatings were savage, the words uttered by those beaten only hoarse cries – "Wallahi! Wahalli!" ("I swear to God! I swear to God!") or simply, "La! La!" ("No! No!").

I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, before someone approached me.

"Who do you work for?" he hissed.

"Al Jazeera. Online."

"Are you alone?"

"So alone."

I was taken to a second cell, this one, with smears of blood on the wall. I found what looked like a bloodless corner and perched until called upon again – at around midnight.

I was again handcuffed, but this time, before the blindfolds went on, I caught sight of a young man, no more than 20, chained to a radiator outside the hallway. He had a legal pad on his knees, was blindfolded, and was quivering so fiercely he could hardly hold the pen with which he was probably meant to ink some sort of confession.

Meanwhile, the beatings and cries outside continued.

Go and read the whole powerful account. If what Parvaz says is true--little doubt of that--then the Syrian regime has lost its legitimacy among its subjects. No wonder it’s willing to do whatever it takes to survive.