How many Independent readers can name a single man imprisoned in the Arab gulags?
A Good Comment by Robert Fisk
Read it to know more about the brutal Syrian regime.
"....But let's flip the curtain a bit and take a look at the other side. For there are Guantanamos galore in the Muslim world and, by and large, we don't care a damn about them.
How many Independent readers can name a single man imprisoned in the Arab gulags?....
....Bahaa Joughel, born in Damascus in 1976, is married with two children and used to live in Pakistan with his family, his sister and her daughters. A partial cripple, Joughel worked on computers and ran a small IT company from his home. Again according to his family, he engaged in no political activities. On 30 January 2002, Pakistani security police raided their home in Islamabad, apparently under the orders of a US officer....
...But the Joughel family was later shocked to learn that he had been "renditioned" to Syria scarcely three months after his arrest – on 4 May 2002, to be precise – and jailed at the "Palestine" branch of Syrian military intelligence. This institution makes the adjective "notorious" irrelevant. He spent 20 months in underground solitary confinement – tortured in his grave-like concrete cabin, his sight damaged by his confinement, just as Canadian Maher Arar was after the Americans sent him to Syria around the same time....
But prisoners at Sednaya staged an uprising – we still don't know the details – which was put down with great brutality. For months, his family lived in terror of hearing that he was dead....
....Attot spent 13 years in Turkey, rarely found a job because he could not obtain a full residence permit – he worked for some time cleaning medical instruments – but was suddenly arrested by the Turkish authorities and handed over to the Syrians, even though his wife and children were Turkish.From 1993 to 2005 – a total of 13 years, longer than any Guantanamo prisoner has been held – he was moved between the "Palestine" and Sednaya prisons....
A former prisoner has confirmed that he saw Attot at Sednaya almost six months ago – so, like Bahaa Joughel, we know he is still alive. But it has been the same old story. No further news. No known reason for this obscene term of imprisonment. No charges. No trial. His Turkish wife Laila says only that her husband "received the worst kind of torture" during his first imprisonment which left him physically and psychologically broken....
...Brave people, all of them. But do we care? "
A Good Comment by Robert Fisk
Read it to know more about the brutal Syrian regime.
"....But let's flip the curtain a bit and take a look at the other side. For there are Guantanamos galore in the Muslim world and, by and large, we don't care a damn about them.
How many Independent readers can name a single man imprisoned in the Arab gulags?....
....Bahaa Joughel, born in Damascus in 1976, is married with two children and used to live in Pakistan with his family, his sister and her daughters. A partial cripple, Joughel worked on computers and ran a small IT company from his home. Again according to his family, he engaged in no political activities. On 30 January 2002, Pakistani security police raided their home in Islamabad, apparently under the orders of a US officer....
...But the Joughel family was later shocked to learn that he had been "renditioned" to Syria scarcely three months after his arrest – on 4 May 2002, to be precise – and jailed at the "Palestine" branch of Syrian military intelligence. This institution makes the adjective "notorious" irrelevant. He spent 20 months in underground solitary confinement – tortured in his grave-like concrete cabin, his sight damaged by his confinement, just as Canadian Maher Arar was after the Americans sent him to Syria around the same time....
But prisoners at Sednaya staged an uprising – we still don't know the details – which was put down with great brutality. For months, his family lived in terror of hearing that he was dead....
....Attot spent 13 years in Turkey, rarely found a job because he could not obtain a full residence permit – he worked for some time cleaning medical instruments – but was suddenly arrested by the Turkish authorities and handed over to the Syrians, even though his wife and children were Turkish.From 1993 to 2005 – a total of 13 years, longer than any Guantanamo prisoner has been held – he was moved between the "Palestine" and Sednaya prisons....
A former prisoner has confirmed that he saw Attot at Sednaya almost six months ago – so, like Bahaa Joughel, we know he is still alive. But it has been the same old story. No further news. No known reason for this obscene term of imprisonment. No charges. No trial. His Turkish wife Laila says only that her husband "received the worst kind of torture" during his first imprisonment which left him physically and psychologically broken....
...Brave people, all of them. But do we care? "
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