Lastly dwelling in Turkey, Mehmet Erturk can not eat the bread his spouse has made him. After 20 years jailed in Syria, half his enamel are lacking and the opposite half are threatening to fall out.
“It was torture after torture,” he informed AFP, miming the truncheon blows to the mouth the guards would give him at a infamous Damascus jail generally known as the Palestine Department, the place he spent a part of his time incarcerated.
Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Erturk lastly made it again to his dwelling to Magaracik on Monday night, a village perched on the prime of a winding street dotted with olive timber some 10 minutes from the Syrian border.
“My household thought I used to be useless,” stated the 53-year-old, whose face and method of strolling make him look 20 years older.
On the night time of his launch, he heard gunshots and started to wish.
“We did not know what was occurring outdoors. I believed I used to be completed,” he stated.
Then he heard loud hammer blows and inside minutes the jail gates have been flung open by the rebels who ousted Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.
– ‘Like being in a coffin’ –
“We hadn’t seen him for 11 years. We had no hope,” admitted his spouse Hatice, sitting cross-legged outdoors their dwelling getting ready bread with their youngest daughter, who was barely six months previous when her father was arrested.
After he was sentenced to fifteen years, the jail authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon, on the mercy of brutal guards.
“Our bones would come out of the socket once they hit our wrists with hammers,” he stated.
“Additionally they poured boiling water down the neck of 1 prisoner. The flesh from his neck simply slid all the way in which down” to his hips, he stated.
Pulling up his proper trouser leg, he reveals his proper ankle, the pores and skin darkened by the chain he wore.
“Throughout the day, it was strictly forbidden to speak… there have been cockroaches within the meals. It was damp, it stank like a bathroom,” he stated, recalling days “with out garments or water or meals”.
“It was like being in a coffin.”
And there was large overcrowding.
– ‘Threw the useless into skips’ –
“They put 115, 120 individuals in a cell for 20 individuals. Many individuals died of hunger,” he stated.
And the guards simply “threw the useless into garbage skips”.
Erturk stated he paid the worth for the hatred Syria’s authorities bore for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who early within the battle urged Assad to depart.
“We Turks suffered a number of torture for that,” he informed AFP, saying he was refused remedy on grounds of his nationality.
He sank so low he even hoped they might cling him.
“They have been taking us to a brand new jail block and I noticed a rope hanging from the ceiling and I stated: ‘Thank God, I am saved’,” he stated.
As he recounted the horrors, he usually broke off to thank “our pricey president Erdogan” for him being again, alive together with his household and never one of many numerous victims of Syria’s brutal jail system.
These might quantity greater than 105,000 individuals because the battle started in 2011, in line with the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
One among his sisters passes him a handful of previous images.
In a single, he’s pictured with a lifelong buddy known as Faruk Karga, who ended up in the identical jail with him shortly after the image was taken.
However Karga by no means got here dwelling.
“He died of hunger in jail in round 2018,” stated Erturk.
“He weighed about 40 kilos.”
