In late September of this year, the UN released a report estimating that over 30 000 people have died as a consequence of the Syrian conflict, 300 000 refugees have been displaced into neighboring countries, and over 1 million IDPs remain trapped within the country’s borders. While these statistical figures continue to provoke international outrage, they fail to properly capture the degree of human suffering brought about by this civil war. On Nov. 2nd, McGill’s Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) tried to address this issue, by giving a voice to Mr. Abdullah Almaliki, a former detainee who spent two years of detention and torture in Al Khattib.A computer engineer with a dual Canadian-Syrian citizenship, Mr. Almaliki was detained from May 2002 to March 2004. He was returning to Syria for the first time since he had left to visit some relatives, when security forces blindfolded him at the airport in Damascus and arrested him on suspicion of being a security risk.Cage Prisoners, a Human Rights organization that monitors the plight of prisoners wrongfully detained, reported that Mr. Almaliki “was severely tortured in the Syrian prison. His experience had left him with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as injuries to his back, jaw, hip and feet.” Mr. Almaliki however used the discussion to go even further in his harrowing description of the conditions suffered in Al Khattib, one of many Syrian underground detention, and torture facilities. “Today, I am going to talk to you about torture. Because torture is taboo. But nobody knows what torture is, unless you have been tortured yourself”.After being forcibly dragged from the airport, Mr. Almaliki was brought to the detention facility. One of the guards asked him if he wanted “to do this the hard way, or the easy way.” Unsurprisingly, Mr. Almaliki opted for the “easy treatment.” What followed however were two years of constant torture, interrogation and prolonged isolated confinement. He described being forced to lie down on the ground with his hand tied behind his back and whipped repeatedly on the soles of his feet. On one occasion, he recounted being hung by his hands for hours until he could not even muster the strength to open his mouth and answer his interrogator. Finally, he gave a detailed account of being forced to squeeze his naked body in a car tire, while continuously being whipped. Human Rights Watch, an international human rights monitoring organization, has reported and documented similar torture methods in Al Khattib including “beating, beating with objects, stress positions, falanga, and electrocution”.
When not being tortured or interrogated, Almaliki was kept in a tiny windowless cell with walls “covered in mold.” Each day, each of the detainees had one opportunity to use the bathroom for only 60 seconds. It seemed that Assad’s security forces seized every opportunity to strip any semblance of dignity away from detainees. After his account, Mr. Almaliki admitted that most of the prisoners detained at the time called these conditions “The Golden Years”: “It was nothing compared to what they had experienced under Assad’s father’s rule. And I’m sure it’s certainly nothing compared to what they are suffering right now”.
Mr. Almaliki offered on November 2nd a brief glimpse into the lives faced by thousands of political prisoners worldwide. His story provides a window into what happens in the shadows of an authoritarian rule that goes beyond statistical figures tossed around in newspapers and scholarly journals. As stated by an attendee of the talk interviewed by the McGill Daily, “the presentation demonstrated the more human side of the conflict. If there was a bigger focus in the media on the human suffering, more than on statistics and numbers, then maybe there would be enough public opinion pressure on people to do something about the conflict”.
