Islamic State mastering Assad-regime torture
Jihadists in charge of Syrian prisons copying cruelty
GAZIANTEP, Turkey — In Syria, the torturers change but the tortures remain the same.
Prisons run by Islamic State jihadists are using the same punishments as those run by the Assad government, according to victims of both regimes.
The tortures are so well known to Syrians they have names: the “German chair,” “the tire” and “the flying carpet.” The favourite of both the regime and Islamic State is the “shabeh,” hanging people by the wrists for long periods, a word some think is related to the Arabic for “ghost.”
The practice was described by activists from the town of Raqqa who suffered it first at the hands of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and then of Islamic State.
“All you think about is pain,” said Hazm al-Hussein, who was tortured by an Islamic State leader previously jailed by the regime. “You can’t think about anything else. You just have to be patient: if you get angry, they will just take your head off. You know they want to do it.”
Raqqa is largely Sunni Muslim, with a Christian minority, and is historically less conservative than the surrounding countryside. Under the regime, protests were ruthlessly suppressed and activists who provided video footage to the outside world were arrested and tortured.
One, Jimmy Shahinian, was given the shabeh every four days for four months until his arms came out of their sockets.
The practice, long outlined in Amnesty International reports, is when the arms are handcuffed behind the back and the cuffs used to hoist the body in the air, putting pressure on the shoulder sockets.
In Shahinian’s case, this was combined with the “German chair,” where the body is strapped into a chair with a back adjusted to inflict pain on the spine. “I was sure I was going to die,” the Armenian Christian said. “Mind you, when you were there, you wanted to die.”
Held at the notorious Palestine Barracks after being seized in Damascus in June last year, in a cell so tightly packed that two men died of suffocation, Shahinian was eventually released after his parents paid a bribe. It was four months before he could feel his hands again.
When the anti-Assad rebels arrived in Raqqa, the jails were opened and liberals were able to set up a human rights group, Haquna. But as the jihadist movement split across Syria, Islamic State took over, driving out first mainstream groups, then Jabhat al-Nusra, the local branch of al-Qaida.
Hussein was seized from a street in October by three masked men.
“They said I was kuffar (unbeliever) and against Shariah, even though I am Sunni,” he said.
He ended up at an oil installation being used as a prison and was also given the shabeh, hanging for around two days each time. He was beaten with electricity cables as he swung from the ceiling.
For another activist, who asked to be known as Samir, the jihadists’ torture was not his first experience. Two years previously, intelligence officers from the regime used “the tire,” in which the victim is forced inside the rim of a large tire that holds you immobile as you are beaten. Samir suffered broken arms and a leg.
The cruelty of Syrian prisons has long been recorded.
“They have made an art form out of torture,” said Samir.
In the “flying carpet,” the victim is strapped to a hinged board, with the ends brought toward each other to bend the spine. Male rape, sometimes with kebab skewers, and starvation are also used.”