Bashar Assad died – then one woman found out about her husband’s past

It was early December when Doona Hajj Ahmed, a Syrian refugee, learned the disturbing details of her husband’s detention in the notorious Al-Khatib prison, known as “Hell on earth“.

She watched stunned prisoners fleeing the country’s heavy-handed security apparatus on the news back home in London, after rebel forces toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

Through tears, Abdullah Al-Nofal, her husband of eight years, sat next to her, turned and said: “This is where I was arrested, this is the place.”

Doona, whose brothers were also arrested during Syria’s 13-year civil war, says she had an idea of ​​what her husband went through during his detention, but this was the first time he shared the full details of what he experienced.

“Abdullah doesn’t like to share things emotionally, he likes to look like a tough guy all the time,” Duna, 33, told the BBC.

“It was a turning point. I saw him as weak. I saw him cry. I saw him say, “That’s where I was. I could be one of them. I could be one of them right now, or I could be dead’.

“I feel like when he saw that, he felt like it (was) closure,” she adds. “Now we want people to hear what Syrians have been through.”

Abdullah, 36, was working in Damascus as a shopkeeper for the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2013 when he and his colleagues were accidentally stopped at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the Syrian capital.

He says he took part in anti-regime protests in 2011 in the southern city of Deraa, where the uprising against Assad began, but soon distanced himself when rebels began using violence and weapons in response to a brutal crackdown by regime forces.

Abdullah was singled out at a checkpoint and put on a green bus, handcuffed and blindfolded, taken to a military unit. He says that then they put him in a cell for three days and beat him.

“It was so dark for three days, I remember,” he says.

“I don’t (hear) any sound. It was so dark. You don’t hear anything. You feel so alone.’

Abdullah was then transported to Al-Khatib, a detention center in Damascus, and placed in a cell with approximately 130 other people.

Al-Khatib was one of several detention facilities run by the Syrian intelligence services.

Nearly 60,000 people have been tortured and killed in Assad regime prisons during the civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group.

Two years ago, a historic court in Germany revealed a Syrian colonel who worked in al-Khatib is guilty of crimes against humanity. Anwar Raslan, 58, has been linked to the torture of more than 4,000 people in prison.

In court, witnesses told how they were detained raped and hung from the ceiling for several hours, and the application of electric current before immersion in water. Assad’s authoritarian government has previously denied allegations of torture.

During his detention in 2013, Abdullah describes how he regularly heard screams of people being tortured.

He recalls how diseases flared up and that about 20 people died while he was kept there.

“When I started looking around, there were people standing almost naked,” he tells the BBC. “They were bloody, as if they had been tortured.

“If you don’t torture yourself, every minute someone will be taken away for investigation.

“They’ll come back to a room full of blood … every time you touch someone, they’ll scream because you touched their wound.”

After 12 days, Abdullah was taken in for questioning, where he said he was repeatedly beaten with a metal weapon and accused of carrying a weapon.

He explains that he could not deny the charges brought against him, as it would have led to a long sentence.

“As long as you say, ‘I didn’t do that,’ they will continue to torture you and take you to another stage of torture,” he says.

“It’s like you’re dying every minute.”

Abdullah says he told officers a false story to avoid further questioning and was “lucky” to be released from custody a month later.

A year later, he left Syria and later received scholarships in Geneva and the United States. Now he lives in London with his wife.

Only now does Abdullah feel able to share the full horror of his experience with his wife, as the risk and fear he faced slowly fades away.

“We finally finished with the regime, we can say that we are really free now,” he says.

“You can use our name. You can use our face. We can tell the full story.”

Human rights defender Dawn sobbed, hearing for the first time what her husband had experienced.

“I listened to him and cried. Every time I feel that this regime has (reached) the maximum of horrors, terrible stories,” she says.

“I’m surprised that no, it’s not the maximum. There may be more.”

She adds, “We are honored to be able to tell our stories. Many people died without hearing.”