Bashar al-Assad fell – then a woman learned her husband’s past

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

She watched bewildered prisoners fleeing the country’s brutal security apparatus on the news back home in London after rebel forces toppled Bashar al-Assad as president.

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.”

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

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

“It was a turning point. I saw him weak. I saw him cry. I saw him say, “That’s where I was. I could have been 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 stopped at random 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 faded away as rebels resorted to violence and weapons in response to a brutal crackdown by regime forces.

Abdullah was picked at the checkpoint and put on a green bus, handcuffed and blindfolded, and taken to a war zone. He says he was then thrown into solitary confinement for three days and beaten.

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

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

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

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

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

Two years ago, a historic process in Germany established a Syrian colonel who worked in Al-Khatib, guilty of crimes against humanity. Anwar Raslan, 58, was linked to the torture of over 4,000 people in prison.

Before the court, witnesses told how they were detained raped and hung from the ceiling for hours, as well as the use of electric shocks before being submerged in water. Assad’s authoritarian government has previously denied allegations of torture.

During his detention in 2013. Abdullah described how he regularly heard screams of tortured people.

He recalls how diseases were rampant and that about 20 people died while he was held there.

“When I started looking around, there were people standing almost naked,” he told the BBC. “They were full of blood, as if (they were) tortured.

“If you’re not being tortured, they’re going to bring someone into the investigation every minute.

“They’ll come back to the 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 transporting weapons.

He explains how he cannot deny the charges brought against him as it would result in a lengthy sentence.

“As long as you say ‘I didn’t do it,’ 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 after a month.

A year later he left Syria and later received scholarships in Geneva and the USA. He is now settled in London with his wife.

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

“We are finally done with the regime and 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 whole story.”

Duna, a human rights activist, sobbed when she heard about her husband’s experiences for the first time.

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

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

She adds: “We are privileged to be able to tell our stories. Many people, they died without being heard.”