(Zaman Al Wasl)- Faten al Hamawi, pseudonym, was arrested twice in 2014 despite the fact that she did not participate in the student or popular peaceful protests.
The Law student was arrested for the first time in the campus as she was humiliated and dragged by her hair in front of her peers.
For three days, she was thrown in a one-meter solitary cell in the Political Security branch in New Aleppo without being charged, where she was subjected to the worst forms of torture, including: suspension from the ceiling, beaten with silicon sticks, putting out cigarettes on her body, and electricity shocks. On her last day, the jailers placed the corpse of an old woman who had recently died of torture.
According to the International Conscience Movement, an NGO, more than 13,500 women have been jailed since the Syrian conflict began, while more than 7,000 women remain in detention, where they are subjected to torture, rape and sexual violence.
After that, she spent 28 days in the State Security branch. She was placed in a 3-meter cell with 38 other women, from elderly to underage girls, and due to the absence of any ventilation, condensation formed on the ceiling, causing skin diseases and asthma.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented 72 methods of torture practiced in the regime's security and military detention centers, both official and secret. Indeed, one former-detainee revealed that during the 62 days of detention, she was subjected to 17 brutal methods of torture.
Faten was questioned multiple times a day, and in every investigation session she was tortured until she lost consciousness, to extract unrealistic confessions from her, with threats of rape, beating and electric shock. Eventually, she was charged with, “financing terrorism, securing and delivering weapons to terrorists, affiliation with the Levant Front, and inciting university students to rebellion.”
After she was released, Faten had a nervous breakdown and became petrified by closed and dark places. Her mother has spent a week stripping cloths stuck to her body from torture and humidity. The State Security branch made her go back for further investigation every week for seven hours.
Months later, she returned to complete her studies and was shocked by the number of security personnel on campus, which surpassed the number of students. She had to leave the university, which turned into a heavily armed military barracks and stayed home, until a security patrol raided her house and took her to Military Security prisons.
There, she experience tenfold the torture she received in State and Political Security: they hit her on the head with the handle of a rifle, burned her hand with a metal skewer, pulled one of her fingernails, witnessed the rape of minors... After a whole month, she was released, carrying unforgettable and traumatizing memories.
Her family had to pay $1200 to deliver her to the liberated northwestern Aleppo in an attempt to start a new life, but the memories of the cells still follow her every moment of her life.
Security services have been targeting university students and carried out raids against them since the beginning of the revolution. Faten concluded that the regime wants to eliminate them as they represent the largest social power, and play the most prominent role in popular movements with the desire to improve the living conditions in the country.
Syrian opposition sources said that more than 500,000 prisoners remain inside the prisons of the Syrian regime.
The eight-year-old war has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and forced 13 million people from their homes, half of whom have left their shattered homeland.
Zaman Al Wasl
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