Lebanon’s Golgotha in the Prisons of Syria:
The Testimony of a Former Lebanese Prisoner
From the archives of the Syrian War Against Lebanon (1975-2005), the
testimony of one among thousands of Lebanese citizens who were arbitrarily
detained in Lebanon by Syrian Intelligence and transferred and incarcerated in
the notorious prisons of the Assad regime.(Translated from Arabic original).
April 12, 2004 – Reporter News
I am a Lebanese citizen from Beirut who was imprisoned in 1991 by the Syrian occupation army. I spent five years at the Syrian prison of Mazze. This testimony is intended for the Lebanese, Arab, and international public opinions so that they are aware of the suffering of the Lebanese under the Syrian occupation: brutal repression and unparalleled terror, not unlike those of the Nazi concentration camps and fascist terror.
I would like this testimony to make its way into the hands of Lebanese, Arab, and international media, and of embassies and non-governmental organizations in order to prompt them to campaign for the release of hundreds of Lebanese prisoners who suffer daily in the prisons of Syria for no other reason than having called for the freedom, independence, and sovereignty for Lebanon.
I would also like for the leaders of the free world to read this testimony and use it to take action for the liberation of Lebanese detainees in Syria, and most importantly to bring an end to the Syrian occupation that suffocates Lebanon and its unfortunate people who reel under the rule of collaborators working for Syria against their own people.
The reader will forgive me for not using my name since I still live in Lebanon and do not want to be the target of reprisals or another detention or even be “skinned alive”, a threat I received from the head of the Syrian Intelligence Services (Mukhabarat) in Lebanon, Major-General Ghazi Kanaan before my release.
My ordeal began one day as I was driving to work in my own car. As I parked in front of my office, a group of Kalashnikov-wielding men in civilian clothes surrounded me and said: “Don’t move. We are Syrian Mukhabarat. You are our prisoner.” The group’s leader had barely finished these words, and two of the men approached me quickly, covered my head with a black bag, and handcuffed me before throwing me in the trunk of their car and speeding away.
I was wondering what they could possibly want from a man like me, a two-year veteran of the Lebanese army who no longer was involved with the military. My only affiliation was with a local association working for the development of my native region and the improvement of its standard of living. As for my political opinions, I opposed the Syrian occupation of my country like most of my fellow Lebanese. I was as well an activist in the movement of General Michel Aoun in both regions of North and South Metn.
The answer to my question soon came when the car stopped and the armed men took me out of the trunk and pushed me, handcuffed and with the bag over my head, down a long stairway that led into a humid and moldy underground dungeon. I could smell the ocean, and I concluded that I must be at the Hotel Beau Rivage prison that I have heard so much about and which the Syrians had converted into their primary prison in Beirut and the headquarters of their Mukhabarat services under the orders of Colonel Rustom Ghazaleh and his aides.
The hitting, kicking, and insults did not stop from the moment they removed me from the trunk of the car and until I was shoved into a tiny cell – 1.5 meters long by 80 cm wide (4.9 by 2.7 ft). They kept on hurling Lebanese swearwords at me but with a Syrian accent: “We’re going to fuck the greatest of the Lebanese. We will walk over the Lebanese with our boots. Who do you think you are, you mother fuckers, to oppose us?” and other similar hair-raising insults.
They then threw me in the dark cell that was really like a tomb. Two hours later, the door opened and a couple of bullies came in, placed the bag again over my head, and pushed me into the narrow passage between the cells, then again up the stairs and into an interrogation room. There, they sat me in a special interrogation chair made of metal and resumed the swearing and cussing, but this time it was directed at prominent Lebanese figures that included, among others, the Maronite Patriarch whom they called a senile idiot. In fact, they did not spare a single Lebanese Christian leader, saying: “You mother fuckers do not want the Syrians?… We will take care of you. By God we will skin you alive…”
Suddenly the room fell silent, as some higher-ranking people walked into the room. I knew that the newcomers were high-ranking because the bullies addressed them with “Sidna” (Sir, or Lord).
The guards took my clothes off (they actually tore them off) without removing the bag off my head or the handcuffs from my wrists. Then they poured very cold water on me, punched me, and hit me with clubs to the point where I lost track of the count of blows. Blood was pouring out of my nose and mouth, while the dirty black bag over my head prevented me from seeing where the blows were coming from: I was like a cat in a bag.
They showered me with questions accusing me of spying on the Syrian army for Israel and every time I denied the spying charges they would fly into a rage and the blows multiplied. They would repeatedly interrogate me then take me back to the cell till I lost any sense of time and place. It was only when my guards and investigators informed me that I will be transferred to Anjar (headquarters of the Syrian Mukhabarat in Lebanon) for additional investigations after the preliminary 3-day phase of the investigation at the Beau Rivage compound that I realized that this circus had lasted for three days.
They put me in a truck with eight others from different regions of Lebanon. Our heads were covered with bags and our hands and feet were cuffed. It was extremely cold and Beirut was under a heavy downpour. By the time we arrived at Dahr El Baydar (the mountain pass on the highway to Damascus) we were shivering from the cold which made our wounds hurt even more.
We arrived at the central prison of Anjar in the Bekaa where all the Lebanese prisoners converge from the South, Beirut, and the North of Lebanon before being transferred to prisons across the border in Syria.
The prison at Anjar was originally a stable that was confiscated by the Syrians when they invaded Lebanon: they transformed it into a penitentiary without making any changes to it except for the room where the horses were shoed which they converted it into a torture room decorating it with the most horrible and dreadful instruments of torture. Anjar’s penitentiary is not very big because, as I mentioned earlier, it is a gathering place for detainees who are then either released and on their way home, or are transferred to the horrific prisons of Syria across the border.
The Anjar penitentiary is under the personal direction of the head of the Syrian Mukhabarat in Lebanon, General Ghazi Kanaan, and his deputy, Major Adnan Balloul nicknamed “the ferocious beast”. They are both assisted by the chief of the Anjar prison guards, Lieutenant Sleiman Salameh, who leads the throng of Alawi investigators always thirsting for Lebanese blood.
At Anjar they lined us up against a wall and took the bags off ours heads so that General Ghazi Kanaan can see our faces up close. In effect, he got close to us and every time he looked into a face he would ask: “Who is this one?”, and a Mukhabarat agent would answer with a list of names in hand: “This is so-and-so.”
Kanaan inspected us for about fifteen minutes then made this political speech: “Anyone who says anything against Syria will be skinned alive (the expression “to skin alive” is one the Syrians use frequently.) We will presently send you to Syria where we will continue our investigation and I advise you to tell all in order to shorten your suffering. Otherwise, you will never see your parents again in Lebanon…”
Kanaan said many things, but I do not remember all of the things he said since it happened a while ago. I remember, though, that one of the detainees tried to answer but a Syrian Mukhabarat officer hit him repeatedly with his rifle butt. Then they replaced the bags over our heads and put us back on the truck that took us to Syria.
“Whoever enters it is doomed, and whoever leaves it is reborn.” That is the slogan inscribed at Mazze prison and in the investigation centers of the Palestinian branches of the Syrian military intelligence services. This prison is the reception center for the Lebanese. Thousands of them have entered it but their traces have disappeared.
There were nine of us from different regions of Lebanon to leave the truck. They took the bags off our heads and put us in line one behind the other. We were received by the Syrian Colonel Mounir Abrass, the head of intelligence in the Palestine Section. Around him were twenty some soldiers with batons and whips who were staring at us with eyes full of hate as if we were long time enemies or Israeli soldiers. When the truck and its escort car left, Abrass’s men stood around us and immediately began to beat us, shouting insults like: “we are going to fuck your dignity and humiliate you. We will step with our boots on the greatest of the Lebanese …”, followed by a stream of swearing that displayed a deep hatred for all that is Lebanese, as if the Lebanese were insects that needed to be eliminated for the glory and survival of Syria…
The beating session ended and we were assembled in the courtyard bleeding from all over. It was night and the cold was unbearable in Damascus. I will never forget that night. We appealed to all the saints and prophets imploring their mercy but to no avail. Ferocious wolves show more compassion towards their victims than the Syrian guards. A few moments later, they drenched us with very cold water. Maybe they wanted to wash us, I do not know. But after spending years at Mazze I came to know that that was the reception accorded to all the new detainees, especially when it is a large group like ours.
Then they replaced the bags over our heads to lead us to the solitary cells located 40 meters (approx. 44 yards) under the ground and measuring 80 cm (2.7 ft) wide by 180 cm (5.9 ft) long. The detainee cannot fully stand up. The doors were made out of steel and they gave us what they called “food” through a slot that the guards opened from outside.
It was the head of the Palestine Section, Colonel Mazhar Fares and his group who lead my investigation. Every day they took me from my cell to the investigation area with my head covered with the black bag. Once in the investigation room they removed the bag off my head and I found Fares in a chair, either smoking a cigar or sipping coffee with guards around him. He would usually start off with an abundant stream of swears directed at the Lebanese, accusing us of collaborating with Israel. Then, and without any warning, the blows would start pouring down.
There are no words to describe how much I suffered in that Syrian prison:
- They whipped me with what is called a “bull’s tail” whip, which is a terrible instrument of torture.
- They pulled off my fingernails and toenails.
- They hit me in on my genital area and inserted sharp objects in my anus.
- They gave me electric shocks on my nose, ears, and throat.
- They burned me with cigars and cigarettes.
- They put me on the “German chair” (A metal chair with moving parts that cause an extreme extension of the spinal column, which leads to quasi-asphyxiation and sometimes the fracture of the vertebrae and a paralysis of the lower limbs)
- They hung me on a tire
- They hung me to a hoist for nine days with my head covered.
- They put salt on my wounds and I screamed and suffered till I lost consciousness. I would regain consciousness when they would wake me up with a spray of cold water, and then to start beating me again.
The investigation period lasted for 150 days that I spent in solitary confinement in my cell – or “tomb” as the detainees would call it. I would eat what they gave me with my hands like the animals we see in movies. I did not know what I was given to eat but I was able to identify breadcrumbs and some olives.
Sometimes, in a state of exhaustion, I would sleep for long hours and I would defecate and urinate in my raggedy clothes.
I will never forget the chief of the Mazze prison, Captain Bassam Hassan who weighed 150 kilos (330 pounds). He would pounce on me like a beast to beat what was left of my body. I learned later from old prisoners that they (the Syrians) learned sophisticated methods of torture from movies they watched.
Many Lebanese prisoners died at Mazze under the torture inflicted by captain Bassam Hassan and his hangmen who numbered 14 and of whom I recall Salah Zoghbi, Abdel Razzaq Halabi, Bassam Mustapha, Hissam Succar, and Muhammad Mufleh, in addition to a number of assistants and soldiers whom we called “the guards”.
Finally, they forced me to sign a written statement whose contents I did not know.
Then I was allowed to take a bath. They shaved my head and gave me clothes similar to a Syrian soldiers’ uniform. Later, one of the guards told me: “We gave you a new name which will be your name until you get out of here. Be careful not to use your real name in front of other prisoners. You must completely forget it, otherwise we will send you back to the tomb, understood?”
Swapping my name for another meant that I did not exist for the Syrian authorities and that I never entered a Syrian prison. It is actually the case for all Lebanese prisoners in Syrian jails whose parents search in vain for information about them because they do not exist on the lists of detainees. The Syrian authorities have to be forced to reveal their true names.
I was then transferred to a bigger cell with a number of young Lebanese and Jordanian men, all accused of threatening Syrian security! We were approximately 25 prisoners and the subterranean cell was not bigger than 12 square meters (39 sq ft). In the summer we suffocated from the heat and humidity, and in winter we shivered from the cold. And from time to time, they remembered us with a torture session so we do not forget where we are.
Nighttime at Mazze is a terrifying experience, so horrific that no horror movie can match it: Absolute silence punctuated with gut-wrenching screams and howls of pain that take one’s breath away as the electric torture sessions or other civilized methods employed by the Syrian Mukhabarat. After an occasional pause, the cries and howls resume even more terrifying than before, and on through the night! My God, we asked ourselves, will this night ever end? During those moments, Moslem prisoners would quietly utter the Allah Akbar (God is Great) chant while the Christians among us would pray to the Holy Virgin even more quietly! My God! Will this night ever end?
I later learned that my parents tried to reach the prison after bribing a Syrian officer and locating my whereabouts. They reported to the prison gate but the warden Bassam Hassan constantly refused to admit to the presence of Lebanese detainees all the while trying, with his assistants, to extort money from the detainees’ parents with the collaboration of Syrian Mukhabarat agents in Lebanon, starting with Ghazi Kanaan, Rustom Ghazaleh, and Adnan Balloul.
There were about 150 Lebanese detainees at Mazze, yet our jailers refused to admit to the presence of a single Lebanese. They even forced us to talk with a Syrian accent to eliminate any trace of us.
There were no medical services in the Syrian prisons and no judicial process for most of the detainees. As for the court that heard the cases of some of the Lebanese, it was the “Third Field Court of the Syrian Expeditionary Force occupying Lebanon”, which means that the Syrian Army in fact applied Martial Law on the Lebanese even as the collaborator regime in Beirut claimed to be a sovereign government! What a shame!
Our daily diet consisted of potatoes, olives, ground wheat and cauliflower. We spent the time crying, exchanging stories from the country and listening to new stories brought in by the new detainees as we dressed their injuries with water and pieces of fabric ripped from the uniforms left behind by the released detainees. We were handled by Syrian army deserters who were serving their prison sentence in one of the wings of the Mazze compound. We called them the Deserters.
As to the deathly ill they were sent to Al-Muassat Hospital located close to the prison and where the Military Police stood guard. One time, one of the detainees died among us from severe torture because he was accused of collaborating with the Lebanese Forces. After an electric torture session, they sent him back to solitary confinement. But realizing that he was dying they brought him back to us in the large cell as he was turning blue and drooling, with blood oozing out of his ears and nose. We told the jailers that he was dying and that there was nothing we could do for him, and they replied: “Let him die. May God never bring him back to life! May God take you all as well!”
We tried to resuscitate him by massaging him and wiping his face with water, but he soon started to pant and in one last burst and virtually unconscious, he looked at us and gave us a sad smile and died. We started yelling for our jailers for help. When we told them that he had died, they started insulting us and then came in and took him to Al-Muassat Hospital, but it was already too late. We later learned that he joined the long list of Lebanese buried in mass graves near the prison where the Syrian Special Forces stood guard to prevent anyone from getting near without special permission.
The ordeal at Mazze prison pales in comparison to the prisons at Sabeh-Bahrat in Damascus, of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Services, or that of Palmyra where starving dogs are used to terrorize the prisoners and death row inmates are impaled. Snakes and rats are used during torture sessions, in addition to other hair-raising methods of horror movie vintage.
Of the stories of Mazze, where I spent five years of my life, is the story of the former Lebanese Member of Parliament, the late Dr. Farid Serhal, who was imprisoned in 1989 after being kidnapped by the Syrians. In addition to light beatings, they forced him to clean the toilets and mop the floors in order to humiliate him because he was once a candidate for the Presidency in Lebanon. They called him “the dog”.
As for Butros Khawand (Phalange Party member who was kidnapped in the early 1990s), he was at Wing 601 in Mazze. He had become skin and bones because of humiliation and torture.
I will never forget the torture inflicted by the Syrian jailers on a young Lebanese soldier they accused of having fought against the Syrian occupation: They crucified him on a big wooden cross – because he was Christian, said Captain Bassam Hassan – then they forced him to run in a circle while beating him like a horse, then they hoisted up his cross and left him out in the sun for nine days. He was bleeding from his mouth, ears and everywhere else.
When Bassel Assad (son of Syrian president Hafez Assad) died, our torturers attacked us like furious bulls. They beat us and left us without food for one whole week because they thought we were happy for his death!
After spending five years in prison without a sentence like all the Lebanese detainees here, and in response to friendly interventions, they decided to let me go. They transported me in a truck to Anjar where I was made to sit on the floor waiting for General Ghazi Kanaan who told me upon his arrival: “I hope you learned your lesson and I warn you that next time I will grind your flesh and bones, and you and those who support you must know that you will always live under our boots and no matter what you do, your destiny is Syria.”
Then they transferred me to Anjar prison where Adnan Balloul and his jailers received me with a flurry of goodbye blows while waiting to deliver me to the Lebanese intelligence services that are under their control. And again, as if all the torture of the past five years was not enough for them, they savagely beat me. I will never forget the chief of the torturers at Anjar, Captain Sleiman Salameh. All those who went through this prison agree that he is the most brutal man on earth.
The collaborator Lebanese intelligence services took custody of me at ten in the evening. The head of the Investigations Service at the Lebanese Defense Ministry’s holding center, Imad Kaakur, immediately beat me under pretense of carrying out an investigation. I told him: “Five years of torture in Syria are not enough? What more do you want from me? I forgot how to speak Lebanese. I even forgot the names of my parents. What more do you want from me?”
My words were useless because he wanted to hit me and draw up a written investigation statement in order to present it to his superior, collaborator Jamil Es-Sayyed. They forced me to put my fingerprint on a blank piece of paper, then transferred me to the Military Police prison at Noura Palace where I spent three days before the intervention of a collaborator Lebanese politician who told them: “Five years in Syria are enough to discipline him. What else do you want? He is no more than a shadow of a man…”
And just like that,
I was freed.
I would like to point out that Hussein Taliss, the escaped prisoner from the Lebanese prison of Rumieh and who is accused of the murder of the French Military Attaché in Hazmieh (Beirut suburb), of the assassination attempt on the late President Camille Chamoun, and of dozens of car bombings in East-Beirut, is one of the main investigators at Mazze and the one in charge of the Lebanese prisoners. He enlisted in the Syrian Mukhabarat – Lebanon Section – and is in charge of the execution of major Syrian security operations in Lebanon. It is said that he is behind many crimes. He lives with his family in Damascus in the Abu Remmaneh neighborhood under an assumed name.
