Anas Abdul Salam from the city of Daraa is the real name of a detainee who escaped from the hell of the Assad regime and went out to tell the world that there is an underground world in Syria full of death and terror where detainees are turned into numbers waiting for their turns to die.
Anas came out from these basements to reveal what he saw and heard in the interrogation branch of the Air Force Intelligence in Mezzeh military airport in which Anas was detained in the beginning of 2013 following his arrest on the Jordanian-Syrian border.
"After I was arrested on the Syrian-Jordanian border, I was transferred to the interrogation branch of the Air Force Intelligence. I was put in cell number 5, a narrow collective cell in which I stayed for 9 months. I spend those 9 months mostly standing on my feet because of the large number of detainees inside; about 40 detainees in an area not exceeding 6 m 2.
-Crime in the gym-
The former detainee says, "I was taken to a large collective hall called the wings hall or the gym. It is located near the airstrip at Mezzeh Military Airport. When the jailer opened the door and brought me to it I stood stunned. I saw what I saw. "He said.
"The hall was full, full of more than 700 detainees, including many elderly, children, sick and wounded from the torture and beatings they were subjected to by the security forces. The atmosphere of the hall was suffocating because there were no ventilation outlets. Fester wounds, malnutrition, hunger and sleep deprivation and oppression which was the cause of the death of many, especially the elderly. "
Abdul Salam revealed that the Air Force Intelligence did not only torture and humiliate the detainees, but brought to the hall two of the most dangerous criminals arrested for drug crimes Hamza al-Diri and Muhannad Kahil, they brought them from the prison of Adra to be heads of detainees in the hall, where they had the first word and last. They decided who can live and who will die.
Kheil, known as Abu Basil in his hometown of Al-Kalamoun, but Diri is from Barzeh, Damascus. Both practiced all kinds of persecution against the detainees, beating the elderly with electric cables and other torture instruments such as sticks which they requested from the jailers and they seized the food from detainees and urinating on them sometimes, as Abdul Salam explained.
He recalls that "most of what was painful and still alive in my memory and I wish I had died and became forgotten and I did not see. It was the sexual assault and rape of children, which was carried out by Kahil and al-Diri continuously in front of all detainees in the dormitory and security elements and branch officers."
He explained that among the detainees are children from Darya and al-Mu'amdiyeh between the ages of 12 and 14, Kahil and al-Diri took them from among the detainees and sexually assaulted them in the corner of the dormitory amidst a deafening and painful silence from the rest of the detainees because the objection or merely pointing to their actions can end in costing them their life.
Abdul Salam narrates what happened with one of the detainees, Mohammed Shetiwi from the city of Daraa. Mohamed was beaten and put to the ground by Kahil and Diri ground. He begged them to leave him to return to his four children, but his cries of did not move them They tied his penis with a rope and they dragged Mohamed inside the hall until his member was swollen and they left him suffering until he died. The tragic scene ended when they knocked on the jailor telling him, “Sir. Someone died here.”
-Air Force Intelligence-
Anas, who is currently residing in Germany, concluded that what he had been subjected to for a year and a half of detention and what he witnessed at branch at Mezzeh military airport he told to one of the Human Rights Watch committees. He confirmed that he is filling a lawsuit against Air Force Intelligence officers in front of German Judiciary following announcement of several Syrian lawyers and human rights organization their intention to prosecute several officers in regime security apparatus who are responsible for the killing and torturing of thousands of Syrians over the period of six years as Amnesty International mentioned in its latest report
