This time he was there by alternative. Mohammed Darwish was again in a jail that was run by Syria’s feared intelligence providers — and Bashar al-Assad was not president.
Cell quantity 9 reeks of putrefaction. It’s an underground windowless room with blackened dripping partitions the place the 34-year-old journalist was held with round 100 others.
Darwish was detained for months by probably the most feared branches of the previous authorities’s many-tentacled intelligence providers.
It was to the so-called Palestine Department in Damascus, often known as Department 235, that he was taken for interrogation, suspected by the authorities of supplying info to “terrorist” teams.
Many individuals who ended up there by no means noticed the sunshine of day once more.
“I used to be a type of they interrogated essentially the most,” Darwish informed AFP of his ordeal in 2018. “Daily, morning and evening” for the 120 days he was detained.
He stated folks had been held after “arbitrary arrests and with no fees ever laid” in opposition to them.
Darwish recalled being saved within the cell which held some 50 prisoners with tuberculosis. He additionally remembered a younger Turkish inmate he stated was pushed mad by the lashes that rained down upon him.
“When the door closed behind us, we had been plunged into the depths of despair. This cell was witness to a lot tragedy,” he stated.
– Deserted ID playing cards –
When Damascus was taken final Sunday by an Islamist coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was previously linked to Al-Qaeda, those that labored at Assad’s Palestine Department merely melted away.
In a single darkish room, AFP noticed a lady whose face was coated with a gray scarf rummage desperately by a pile of deserted ID playing cards.
Hundreds like her have swarmed the nation’s infamous homes of detention over the previous week, on the lookout for proof that may cause them to family members who had disappeared below Assad’s rule.
And a few former prisoners, like Darwish, are additionally returning as free males to the place they had been as soon as incarcerated, looking for closure.
Adham Bajbouj, 32, is one other former prisoner.
“They informed us our keep on the Palestine Department was only for a query and reply session,” he stated.
“However I used to be in there for 35 days. Or possibly it was 32, I not keep in mind very nicely,” Bajbouj stated.
His brother, who was accompanying him, did keep in mind one key element.
“He weighed 85 kilos (187 kilos) when he arrived, and was simply 50 when he bought out,” he stated.
– Fixed humiliation –
In addition to being questioned, prisoners had been topic to fixed humiliation.
“We needed to scrub clear the torture areas and bathrooms, and drag the useless from the cells,” stated Bajbouj, who continues to be frail and stated that this was his first time close to the constructing since his launch.
What the previous detainees name the “torture rooms” are on the highest flooring. The odor of smoke nonetheless lingered from the workplaces of a few of those that had been in cost.
Earlier than these officers left, they burned 1000’s of paperwork on the cabinets of 1 room, a lot of which had been presumably stamped “Secret”.
One letter relationship to 2022 that escaped the flames was addressed by the military’s excessive command to these “charged with coping with terrorism affairs”.
It described the arrest of a soldier who was accused of sustaining relations with “armed terrorist organisations”.
One other former inmate of cell quantity 9 appeared unable to return to phrases with the brand new actuality in Syria.
“They charged me with terrorism,” 42-year-old Wael Saleh stated. “I am nonetheless charged with terrorism.
“I’ll always remember what I went by right here. I keep in mind there have been 103 of us crammed into this cell. We stayed standing up so the older ones may lie down.”
