Tadmur hell.

In 1980, the young man "Mohammed Saleem Hammad" moved from his country Jordan to Syria to study engineering in Damascus University. Like any ambitious student, Mohammed hoped to acquire an academic qualification that brings about happiness to his family and benefits him in his future.

Mohammed was still a teenager when he found himself surrounded by an uprising people who seek to get back their basic human rights. He has never undergone any political experience or practised opposing activities against the Syrian government, save that he was surrounded by a Syrian academic environment opposing to the closed totalitarian regime. This was a good reason for Syrian authorities to cast him in Tadmur desert detention camp without trial for only 11 years.

In a book he issued this year 1998 entitled" Tadmur: a Witness & a Witnessed" Mohammed narrated his horrific experience in Syrian prisons which summarises the suffering and ordeal lived by thousands of Syrian and other Arab detainees (from Lebanese, Palestinian, Jordanian & Iraqi nationalities). The Syrian regime denied consistently the existence of such detainees in Syrian jails, and therefore all appeals to release them have been turned down despite the long imprisonment periods they spent away from normal life and their families.

In his book of 245 pages of Medium size, Mohammed said that torture started with his detention in the Intelligence Headquarter Branch at Al-Adawi in Damascus on 8^th October 1980. At that time his name and identity were replaced by the number (13), he was stripped out of his clothes, and interrogators ordered him to kneel on his knees, blindfolded, lowering his head to answer their questions while he was severely beaten under threats to finish him instantly.

Mohammed added that he was unable to admit something he had never known anything about, so he was moved to the torture chamber downstairs in a dim cellar. There, he was tied up naked up the chamber while the executioners and interrogators started storming him with hot iron bars, electric stripped cables and sticks. They rushed to use electric shocks in sensitive parts of his body threatening him to death unless he confesses soon.

Finishing that round of torture called "spreadsheeting" in executioners terminology, Mohammed was moved to experience another kind of torture called "the flying mat" In this technique the detainee is held fast by iron fasteners to a timber board of two sections. One section is raised while beating on the soles of feet starts with metal-stripped cables. A third style of torture is called "The German chair". This chair contains moveable parts where detainees are tightened by arms and feet, then its back shore is pulled backward driving the body upper part, while the feet are still fastened from the other side which causes sever pressure on the chest and the spine, and consequently resulting in ripping the spine apart and later causing paralysis.

The Jordanian youth said that this round of torture is but a preliminary stage of a long agonising journey spent by political detainees in Syria. Mohammed was transferred later to the Military Interrogation Branch in Damascus where he was subjected to new rounds of horrific torture, which included electric shocks, hot metal branding, beating and spreadsheeting.

Tadmur (Palmyra) Desert Prison, which was built on the days of the French occupation to hold freedom fighters, is the worst among Syrian prisons and detention camps. Torture there is considered an indispensable and systematic part of detention. It usually starts the moment detainees arrive blindfolded and terminates with their death, or occasionally with their release.

Mr. Hammad counted some sorts of tortures he experienced, or witnessed in Tadmur detention camp:

0. "Marking": It is a random selection of a detainee and marking him to become continuously a subject to torture until he dies, so that he becomes an example to the other detainees.
1. "Tire": In this technique the detainee is squeezed in a rubber tire so that his feet are raised up, then he is severely beaten. Then his feet are tightened by metal chain to obstruct any movement. Executioners then make their assault by beating, kicking the detainee until he is bathed with blood.
2. "Regular Monitoring" of the dormitory where a big number of detainees are crammed together. Dormitories are usually rectangular halls with two barred openings in the roof. Intelligence and Military Police elements monitor round the hour everything from above. They select detainees for torture whenever a new round of torture is due to start.
3. "Register": It is the daily check of detainees, which is always accompanied by beating, kicking, swearing. Detainees are allowed to sleep only on worn blankets that do not provide warmth or shelter in the severely cold desert nights.
4. "Break": The intelligence and executioner elements get use of this period when detainees are driven out to prison yards to launch their assault against them with sticks and stripped cables, and to prevent them talking to each others. Food is another insulting and tormenting story in Syrian detentions, particularly in Tadmur detention camp. Meals served are little and rotten which cause many diseases. Sometimes detainees are ordered to eat flies, cockroaches and dead rats under threats of torture if they refuse to obey orders.
5. "Haircut": Detainees are ordered to kneel in front of the barber who is usually an executioner, who uses a sharp blade to cause deep cuts in detainees’ heads and faces.
6. "Bathing": Detainees are ordered to get out to the prison’s yards while they are receiving beats, kicks and whips. Then they are driven in-groups of six to compartments where showers of cold water accompanied by torture. No sooner they take out their clothes than water is cut off and they are ordered to quit under torture.

Mohammed describes the horrific atmosphere engulfing Tadmur Detention camp:

0. continuous execution campaigns of political detainees,
1. decease of others due to serious diseases because they are simply denied the

   basic rights to receive treatment,

2. false trials presided by security and intelligence officers during which random judgements are pronounced pursuant to confessions pulled out under torture.

Despite all that, executioners forced detainees whose majority come from academic background and university students to vote "YES" to the reelection of President Asad in 1991. Mohammed said that executioners extended their harshness unlimitedly to force detainees to write the word "YES" with their blood.

This documentary book contained witnesses made by a number of detainees about the massacre took place on 27^th June 1980 when Colonel Rifat Asad, the president’s brother ordered his Defence brigades to open fire on more than 600 detainees and later to bury them in collective graves somewhere east of Tadmur.

Mohammed who is still suffering from the long imprisonment years, makes his appeal for all Human right organisations and supporters of liberties to use their full authority and exert pressure on Syrian government :

0. to release all political prisoners from Syrian and non-Syrian nationalities;
1. to send a fact investigation committee to Tadmur detention camp to investigate the narrated horror, madness and systematic torture operations;
2. to request the Syrian government to disclose names of all persons died under torture, due to execution campaigns and diseases;
3. to submit to trial those persons responsible for torture and causing deaths;
4. and eventually to terminate all sorts of human rights violations in Syria.

Full book text is available online on http://www.shrc.org/books/tadmur.saleemhamad