Al Jazeera's Dorothy Parvaz: "My Time In A Syrian Prison"

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/2011518184325620380.html

'We could clearly hear the interrogator pummelling his fists into his subject,' writes our correspondent. "The beatings I heard almost around the clock were savage."

D. Parvaz
Last Modified: 18 May 2011 20:27

Parvaz recounts her experiences while detained in Syria and Iran.

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"Who do you work for?" he hissed. "Al Jazeera. Online." "Are you alone?" "So alone."

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Most of the our days were spent listening to the sounds of young men being brutally interrogated – sometimes tied up in stress positions until it sounded like their bones were cracking, as we saw from our bathroom window (a bathroom with no running water, except for one tap in a sink filled with roughly 10 cm of sewage).

One afternoon, the beating we heard was so severe that we could clearly hear the interrogator pummelling his boots and fists into his subject, almost in a trance, yelling questions or accusations rhythmically as the blows landed in what sounded like the prisoner's midriff.

My roommate shook and wept, reminding me (or perhaps herself) that they didn't beat women here. There was a brief break before the beating resumed, and my first impulse was to cover my ears, but then I thought, "If this man is crying, shouldn’t someone hear him?"

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I couldn't help but wonder: what sort of threat does this girl pose to the Syrian state that they have to keep her in this rotting room? What are they so afraid of?

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