( Zaman Al Wasl)- Near the Umayyad Square, few blocks from Bashar al-Assad's Palace in Damascus, hundreds of Syrian were victims of the arbitrary arrest and forced disappearing.
Al-Tahouna prison, or Mill prison, is affiliated to the elite Republican Guard forces where prominent Syrian activists, dissidents and even pro-regime officials and Bashar al-Assad's cousins were arbitrarily detained.
It was also used to punish the officers of the Republican Palace.
A military source told Zaman al-Wasl that hundreds of detainees were tortured to death.
Nobody went out alive of Tahouna prison, just few with permanent disabilities, he added.
This prison, which was renewed in 2008, includes three underground cells and other cells above the ground.
The source confirmed that the most prominent figures arrested in this prison like Assef Shawkat, Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law and former deputy Minister of Defense. He was killed in July 2012.
Shawkat held by Basil al-Assad, the older brother of Bashar before he died in a car accident in 1994.
Another controversial figure was detained in Tahouna prison for months. Ahmad Abu Adass, the man who appeared in a false claim of responsibility aired on Al-Jazeera shortly in 2005 after the Rafic Hariri killing, on behalf of a group called Nusra and Jihad in Greater Syria.
Zaman Al Wasl
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