The atrocities taking place in the Syrian prison system are no secret, and foreign media outlets have in the past revealed the systematic nature of the killings and torture behind the Assad regime’s prison walls. Now, a report released by a former prisoners’ organization reveals how the regime uses extortion and bribery to fund the brutal detention system.
The report, published by the Saidani Prisoners’ and Missing Persons Union, will examine more than 1,500 prisoners released from one of the Syrian regime’s infamous prisons, and found that at least a quarter of them were asked to pay more than $ 5,000, a huge fortune in Syrian civil war .
According to the document, inmates whose families live outside the Syrian border have been victims of systematic extortion, paying sums of $ 30,000 and more. Authorities demanded bribes for most of the elementary things, such as providing edible food and family visits, but also for the purpose of shortening punishment and releasing prisoners. Among the bribe recipients were judges, prison administrators, wardens and even investigators, who demanded money to alleviate the torture handed down to the inmates. The report claims that the extortion mechanism is a tool used by the regime, which has difficulty paying salaries to its workers, and its role is to spur the workers of Syria’s vast prison system.
Diab Sarih, the report’s author, told the British Guardian: “This is an industry of incarceration and torture. The existence of the Syrian regime relies entirely on security and intelligence forces. The government pays meager salaries and encourages corruption and extortion. The bribe money serves as the infrastructure for the entire rotten system.
“A large part of the money ends up in the pockets of regime officials. Those officials cannot use foreign accounts due to the sanctions on the government, so they hold cash and valuables in place,” Diab explained.
Between 100,000 and 250,000 people were held in the Assad regime’s detention system before the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011. It is now estimated that close to a million people have passed through the Syrian regime’s prisons and torture facilities since the uprising broke out, and tens of thousands have died there. In the Saidnia prison alone, according to a report by Amnesty International, close to 17,000 prisoners were executed between 2011 and 2015. In 2016, the US State Department claimed that a crematorium had been built there to dispose of the bodies of those killed.
Abdullah (pseudonym) is mentioned in a report by the Union of Prisoners and Missing Persons of Saidanya Prison, and his story is heartbreaking but not unusual. He was arrested after defecting from the Syrian army and moving between nine different prisons. He must live and eventually bring about his release.Although his relatives transferred the funds as required through a lawyer close to the regime, Abdullah was beaten and tortured.
“Every day about four or five prisoners died. Most of them from starvation, others from torture and beatings. The guards would occasionally enter the cell and beat random prisoners for no particular reason, in order to leave everyone in a state of constant fear,” Abdullah recounted in the report.
While his relatives were privileged to see him released from prison, many other families did not have such luck. Nadia (pseudonym) mentioned in the report paid thousands of dollars to regime officials to find out what happened to her husband, who was arrested by security forces five years ago but was not given any information. In her testimony she writes: “I was sure I would know something, But no answer was ever received. It completely broke me. “