The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Exclusive interview | Female talks about mental and physical torture and sexual harassment in Air-Force Intelligence prisons in Aleppo

Stories of Syrian females, who have been released from regime prisons and survived the horror of violations committed there, are almost endless. Like thousands of Syrian women, a woman from Al-Hamraa village in Sahl Al-ghab in Hama countryside known by her initials as A.M. has endured brutal torture in regime prisons for nearly a year and half, and now she has to deal with uncertain future after she has dropped out of university and her husband abandoned her.

 

The university student from Aleppo University has shared her experience with SOHR: “I was arrested in mid-April 2015 while I was going from my village in Sahl Al-Ghab to Aleppo city. The bus I was travelling in was stopped at a military checkpoint where members searched in my mobile phone and personal possessions, then they ordered the bus driver to move on. I was taken to a single room next to the checkpoint, where the members started to interrogate me for two hours, then they shackled my hands, blindfolded me and tool me to the “Air-Force Intelligence” branch in Al-Zahraa neighbourhood in Aleppo city. I was kept in a cell near the investigation room for nearly one week, during which I was scared and had panic, since I was able to hear the sound of prisoners being tortured during interrogation. I was soon taken for interrogation for ‘communicating with agents and armed groups’. I was insulted, beaten brutally and forced with other female prisoners to undress almost completely in the investigation room every 48 hours. I remained in a small cell with 20 women and children for nearly two months.”

 

“I was subjected to various methods of torture on a daily basis, including sexual harassment, verbal abused and electrocution. Although I denied all accusations against me, I was referred to a field court, where I was sentenced to 18 months in prison for ‘communicating with agents and armed groups’. I spend 15 months in Aleppo Central Prison and Hama Central Prison, before the sentence was appealed. I was released in mid 2016 after paying large sums of money to a lawyer and pro-regime influential figures. When I was released I was shocked when I know that my husband had abandoned me and that I was expelled form the university after I was a few steps away from graduation,” the woman added.

 

The female survivor now lives in a refugee camp in north-western Idlib near the Syria border with Iskenderun, after regime forces have captured large spaces of Sahl Al-Ghab, including her village, while woman are struggling with dire humanitarian situation with no a family provider to take care of her and her son, who was a baby when she was detained.