President Assad reaffirms his father's legacy by quelling dissent with brute force.
Hugh Macleod and a special correspondent
Al-Jazeera
""Bashar is God! Bashar is God!"
As the fists and boots and sticks pummelled his body and bloodied his face, the college student screamed out what he thought his interrogators wanted to hear: The name of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad.
It worked. The secret policemen tired of beating him for the day and threw him back into the makeshift cell, a room inside the power station in Banias, where local prisons are full to bursting from a wave of arrests ahead of the military assault on the port city, which began earlier this month.
The respite was short-lived. Handcuffed by his wrists and ankles and blindfolded, the student, who gave testimony to a trusted local activist on condition of anonymity, was led to a car and driven to another torture cell.
"I was being beaten all over my body. I was bleeding and was saying the shahada to myself, ‘There is no God, but God,' because I thought I was going to die at that moment," he said....
'Rampant torture'
Where the torture cells of Tadmor, Syria's desert prison, once extracted confessions from individuals accused of standing against the Assads - Communists like Akram Bunni, left partially paralysed after his spine was stretched in a torture known as the German Chair; Muslim Brotherhood members whipped with cable and stunned with electric shock devices - today's torturers appear to be pursuing a policy of deterrence and collective punishment.....
Hundreds of disappearances
Across Syria a campaign of mass arrests since the uprising began in mid-March has seen more than 7,000 Syrians arbitrarily detained and thrown into prisons, according to a count by activists, contacting detainees' family and friends.
The detained include a wide cross section of society, mainly young men aged between 20 and 50, but including children and elderly, especially activists and those involved in protests or seen filming them, but also community leaders, imams and students.....
His father's footsteps
The uprising in Syria began with the torture of children: 15 boys, aged between 10 and 15, from Deraa, who were beaten and had their finger nails pulled out by men working for General Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Assad.
Two months into the most serious threat to the decades-old dictatorship, the jails in some cities are already full. As well as holding prisoners in the power station in Banias, security forces have also begun using a local sports stadium to hold hundreds of detainees, according to eyewitness accounts gathered by activists....Like the father from whom he inherited power, President Assad has sought to crush the uprising against him with force and mass arrests...."
Hugh Macleod and a special correspondent
Al-Jazeera
""Bashar is God! Bashar is God!"
As the fists and boots and sticks pummelled his body and bloodied his face, the college student screamed out what he thought his interrogators wanted to hear: The name of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad.
It worked. The secret policemen tired of beating him for the day and threw him back into the makeshift cell, a room inside the power station in Banias, where local prisons are full to bursting from a wave of arrests ahead of the military assault on the port city, which began earlier this month.
The respite was short-lived. Handcuffed by his wrists and ankles and blindfolded, the student, who gave testimony to a trusted local activist on condition of anonymity, was led to a car and driven to another torture cell.
"I was being beaten all over my body. I was bleeding and was saying the shahada to myself, ‘There is no God, but God,' because I thought I was going to die at that moment," he said....
'Rampant torture'
Where the torture cells of Tadmor, Syria's desert prison, once extracted confessions from individuals accused of standing against the Assads - Communists like Akram Bunni, left partially paralysed after his spine was stretched in a torture known as the German Chair; Muslim Brotherhood members whipped with cable and stunned with electric shock devices - today's torturers appear to be pursuing a policy of deterrence and collective punishment.....
Hundreds of disappearances
Across Syria a campaign of mass arrests since the uprising began in mid-March has seen more than 7,000 Syrians arbitrarily detained and thrown into prisons, according to a count by activists, contacting detainees' family and friends.
The detained include a wide cross section of society, mainly young men aged between 20 and 50, but including children and elderly, especially activists and those involved in protests or seen filming them, but also community leaders, imams and students.....
His father's footsteps
The uprising in Syria began with the torture of children: 15 boys, aged between 10 and 15, from Deraa, who were beaten and had their finger nails pulled out by men working for General Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Assad.
Two months into the most serious threat to the decades-old dictatorship, the jails in some cities are already full. As well as holding prisoners in the power station in Banias, security forces have also begun using a local sports stadium to hold hundreds of detainees, according to eyewitness accounts gathered by activists....Like the father from whom he inherited power, President Assad has sought to crush the uprising against him with force and mass arrests...."
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