Bashar al-Assad fell – then one woman learnt her husband’s past

At the beginning of December when Douna Haj Ahmed, a refugee from Syria, discovered the dismay of her husband’s detention in the notorious Al-Khatib prison – known as “Hell on Earth“.

He sees confused prisoners fleeing the country’s brutal security forces, on news back home in London, after rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad from the presidency.

Through tears, Abdullah Al Nofal, her husband of eight years sat next to her, turned and said: “This is where I was arrested, this is the place.”

Douna, whose brothers were also imprisoned during Syria’s 13-year civil war, says she had an idea of ​​what her husband went through in prison – but this is the first time she has revealed what she endured.

“Abdullah doesn’t like to share things emotionally, he likes to always look like a strong person,” Douna, 33, told the BBC.

“It was a change. I saw him weak. I saw him cry. I saw him say: ‘This is where I was. I could be one of them. I could be one of them right now, or I would be dead. ‘.

“I feel that when he saw this, he felt like this [was] closed,” he adds. “Now we want people to hear what the Assyrians went through.”

Abdullah, 36, was working in Damascus as a store manager with the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2013 when he and his colleagues were randomly stopped at a checkpoint outside the Syrian capital.

He is said to have participated in anti-government protests in 2011 in the southern city of Deraa, where the uprising against Assad began, but soon withdrew as rebels resorted to violence and weapons in response to government military brutality.

Abdullah was picked at the checkpoint and boarded a green bus, handcuffed and blindfolded, and headed to the war zone. It is said that he was then imprisoned for three days and beaten.

“It was very dark for three days, I remember,” he says.

“I don’t [hear] every sound. It was very dark. You don’t hear anything. You get very lonely.”

Abdullah was then transferred to Al-Khatib, a detention center in Damascus, where he was held in a cell with about 130 people.

Al-Khatib was one of the many detention centers used by the Syrian police.

Around 60,000 people have been tortured and killed in prisons operated by the Assad regime during the civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group.

Two years ago, a historic experiment in Germany was discovered A Syrian colonel who works in Al-Khatib has been charged with crimes against humanity. Anwar Raslan, 58, has been linked to the torture of more than 4,000 people in prison.

In court, witnesses described the condition of the detainees raped and hung from the ceiling for many hours, and using electronic devices before being immersed in water. Assad’s government has previously denied allegations of torture.

While in prison in 2013, Abdullah describes how he always felt the screams of people being tortured.

He remembers how diseases increased and that about 20 people died in the prison.

“When I started looking everywhere, there were people standing almost naked,” he told the BBC. They were full of blood, like them [have] they were tortured.

“If you don’t torture yourself, every minute they take someone to investigate.”

“They’ll come back to the room covered in blood … every time you touch someone they scream because you touched their wound.”

After 12 days, Abdullah was taken in for questioning, where he was allegedly beaten repeatedly with a metal weapon and accused of carrying weapons.

He explains how he would have denied the accusations against him because it would have resulted in him being punished for a long time.

“As soon as you say ‘I didn’t do it’, they will continue to torture you and will take you to the next stage of torture,” he says.

“Every second feels like you’re dying.”

Abdullah allegedly told police false stories to avoid questioning, and was “lucky” to be released from prison after a month.

A year later, he left Syria and was later offered training in Geneva and the US. He now lives in London with his wife.

Only when Abdullah feels that he can share with his wife all the dangers that he has faced, because the danger and fear that he faced is slowly disappearing.

“We will finish[ed] and the government, we can say that we are free right now,” he says.

“You can use our name. You can use our face. We can say everything.”

Douna, a human rights activist, broke down in tears when she heard for the first time what her husband had gone through.

“I was hearing him and I was crying. I always heard that the government is here [has reached] Very scary, bad news,” he says.

“It amazes me that, no, this isn’t more. There could be more.”

He also said: “We are lucky because we can tell our stories.”