Syria: Deported Palestinian journalist speaks out about torture in custody

Amnesty International
17 May 2012

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"A prominent journalist has told Amnesty International how Syrian government forces tortured and detained him in deplorable conditions before deporting him to Jordan on Monday.

Salameh Kaileh, a 57-year-old Jordanian national of Palestinian descent, has lived and worked in the Syrian capital Damascus since 1981.

On 24 April, plain clothes officials from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence arrested him during a raid on his flat in Barzah, a Damascus suburb. Amnesty International considered him to be a prisoner of conscience, held solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

“The main reason for my arrest, from what I understood, is a conversation I had on Facebook with a friend outside Syria about my position on the revolution and my opinion about the Muslim Brotherhood and so on,” Kaileh told Amnesty International.

Following his arrest, Kaileh was held at a Syrian Air Force Intelligence branch in Damascus, where he was insulted and beaten for days. Officers used the falaqa torture method on him, whipping the soles of his feet with a thin bamboo stick.

One unidentified official targeted the journalist’s background by shouting insults against Palestinians......


“Unfortunately, the hospital was much worse than what I was subjected to in prison. It was not a hospital, but a slaughterhouse,” Kaileh said......

“Salameh Kaileh’s dreadful ordeal shows the extent to which the Syrian authorities will go to attempt to crush dissenting voices,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Programme Director.

“His horrendous account mirrors the reports we’ve received about thousands of detainees being tortured and ill-treated in detention – often in extremely poor prison conditions – amid the Syrian government’s crackdown over the past 15 months.

“This is not the first time that we have documented the involvement of doctors in human rights violations. They should be doing their best to restore people to health rather than allowing patients to be held in appalling conditions and subjected to torture in hospitals.”......"