A prominent Palestinian writer who was jailed in Syria for nearly three weeks described the facilities as “human slaughterhouses,” saying security agents beat detainees with batons, crammed them into stinking cells and tied them to beds at night.
Salameh Kaileh, 56, was arrested on April 24 on suspicion of printing leaflets calling for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is fighting a 15-month-old uprising against his rule. Kaileh’s story offers a rare inside glimpse into the conditions faced by detainees held by the country’s feared security services.
“It was hell on earth,” Kaileh said on Sunday, nearly a week after Syrian forces released him and deported him to Jordan. Speaking at his friend’s home in an Amman suburb, Kaileh had bluish-red bruises on his legs, which he said were the result of beatings with wooden batons that were studded with pins and nails.
“I felt I was going to die under the brutal, savage and continuous beating of the interrogators, who tied me to ropes hung from the ceiling,” said Kaileh, a soft-spoken man with a shock of white hair who appeared frail, barely able to stand on his feet.
Born in Birzeit, West Bank, Kaileh has suffered under the regime in Damascus before. He was imprisoned by the Syrian government in 1992 for eight years because of his alleged links to underground Syrian communist and leftist opposition groups. A well-known leftist, he has written books on subjects ranging from Marxism to Arab nationalism.
This time, he was held in at least four detention centers after security forces arrested him at his home in Damascus, where he has lived for more than 30 years.
Kaileh denied printing the leaflets, which he said angered the regime because they read: “For Palestine to be free, Syria’s regime has to fall.” Syria has often touted its support of the Palestinian cause to boost its credentials as a bastion of Arab nationalism.
Kaileh’s detention caused an outcry among Arab intellectuals, who called for his release and lashed out at al-Assad — whose crackdown has not spared other intellectuals and artists.
Ali Ferzat, a political cartoonist whose drawings expressed Syrians’ frustrated hopes for change, was beaten by masked gunmen as he left his Damascus studio in August last year. The assailants broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside Damascus.
A group of intellectuals and artists, including Syrian actress May Skaff, were rounded up and jailed for a week last summer after holding a protest in Damascus.
Recalling his arrest, Kaileh said Syrian intelligence stormed his house shortly after midnight.
“They handcuffed and blindfolded me, took my three laptops, cellphones and any shred of paper they could lay their hands on,” he said.
“I told them I had nothing to do with the leaflets, but the interrogators insisted that they had information I was distributing them and that I had printed them out,” he said.
He said Syrian security wanted to intimidate him by being “disdainful to Palestine and the Palestinian people, cursing us and saying the Israelis were better than us.”
In one of the detention facilities in Mazeh — a Damascus suburb — Syrian security threatened they will “rape me and tape it to put the clip on the Internet,” he said.
Kaileh said he shared a cell with at least six army defectors and several doctors who had treated wounded civilians.
At night, he said he heard other prisoners “cry and scream while they were beaten.”
Days later, Kaileh said he was admitted to a government hospital to treat his leg wounds. There, the conditions were “worse than in the detention centers.”
He said he was squeezed into a small room with 30 other prisoners, mostly activists who allegedly participated in anti-government protests.
“The room was barely enough to accommodate five people,” he said. “It was filled with body stench, dirt, urine and stool. Two people shared small beds and were tied to them, the food was lousy and we couldn’t eat properly because our hands and feet were handcuffed day and night.”
“We were not allowed to go to the restroom,” he said. “Still, we were beaten if we urinated in our sleep.”
“The detention facilities I was taken to were human slaughterhouses,” Kaileh said.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS