Inside Syria’s 27 torture centres
By: Anthony Bond
‘ We took their fingernails out with pliers and we made them eat
them. We made them suck their own blood off the floor’: Grisly accounts
from inside Syria’s ’27 torture centres’
Syrian intelligence agencies are running torture centres across the
country where detainees are beaten with batons and cables, burned with
acid, sexually assaulted, and their fingernails torn out, a report
released today has said.
Human Rights Watch identified 27 detention centres
that it says intelligence agencies have been using since President
Bashar al-Assad’s government began a crackdown in March 2011 on
pro-democracy protesters trying to oust him.
The New York-based rights group found that tens of thousands of people had been detained across Syria. It conducted more than 200 interviews with people who said they were tortured.
Torture:
This graphic shows one of the methods used by Syrian intelligence
agencies to torture detainees. With Dulab the victim is forced to bend
at the waist and stick his head, neck, legs and sometimes arms into the
inside of a car tire.
Awful:
Some of those being held in the torture centres would be beaten with
objects including cables, whips, sticks, batons and pipes.
Painful:
Shabeh is another torture method which was used on detainees. It
involved hanging the victim from the ceiling by the wrists.
This included a 31-year-old man who was detained in the Idlib area in June and made to undress.
He told the group: ‘They started squeezing my fingers with pliers. They
put staples in my fingers, chest and ears. I was only allowed to take
them out if I spoke. The staples in the ears were the most painful.’
‘They used two wires hooked up to a car battery to give me electric
shocks. They used electric stun-guns on my genitals twice. I thought I
would never see my family again. They tortured me like this three times
over three days,’ he said.
The report was released as it emerged Syrian President Bashar Assad
claims he regrets the shooting down of a Turkish jet by his forces last
month.
Unbearable:
Basat al-reeh involves tying the victim down to a flat board with the
head suspended in the air so the victim cannot defend himself.
Abuse: Electrocution was also used on those being held in the 27 torture centres.
Harsh: Falaqa involves beating the detainee with sticks, batons, or whips on the soles of the feet.
