(Zaman Al Wasl)- “How many years have you been sentenced? Summing up his worries: Five years. With an honest smile: your imprisonment sentence is equal to the number of years that I spent in the prison toilet only.” Such a conversation that was never erased from the mind of D.S, a former detainees, who asked his name be withheld.
Even after five years. It was the first contact between him and the long-time detainee Ragheed Ahmad Al-Tatari, the man who spent 32 years in the notorious military prison of Sednaya north of the capital Damascus.
The military pilot was still able to laugh and joke after he had been away for thirty two years, D.S said.
Al-Tatari's torment began in 1981, he was 27-year-old at the time, when a fellow military pilot fle Syria to Jordan with his fighter jet. In the aftermath and the first reprisal acts by the Syrian regime was detaining Al-Tatari and all crew and staff in the squadron by the Air Force Intelligence.
Al-Tatari was charged with covering up his colleague's plot and escape plan. He was sent to the Mezze prison, where he remained for two years in solitary confinement, after which he was transferred to Tadmur (Palmyra) prison until 2000, after which he was transferred to Sednaya prison and remained there until 2011, then the prisoners were transferred to Adra (Damascus) central prison.
He stood before the military court after four years of arrest but his trial lasted for only one minute. The court passed him a life sentence.
All inmates deal with Ragheed with high respect. He was a leading example for determination and bravery and stubbornness, according to the former detainee.
Al-Tatari has defied the long days behind bars. He developed his talent in painting and sculpting. His sculptures were small, beautiful and vibrant. The ingredients were a mixture of bread residues, sugar and citric acid and olive seeds.
Al-Tatari used to organize training courses to teach prisoners the chess game. He made the chess stones of bread dough and a chess board was drawn on a rag.
Al-Tatari used to ease the burden of his inmates in Sednaya prison.
One of the many comparisons betweens his former prison, Tadmur and Sednay that inmates in Sednaya prison can breathe where being in Tadmur prison was meaning that no place for humanity especially during the the 1980s where Hafez al-Assad regime was brutally cracking down his opponents, especially the Muslim Brother hood and even leftists.
But during the inmates strike in Sednaya in 2008, which lasted for eight months, the prisoners were wishing death upon the regime’s crackdown. D.S told Al-Tatari that Sednaya is no longer different from Tadmur prison in anything. Both are slaughterhouses.
Al-Tatari used to hide his pains and to not complain about his worries to anyone
(Reporting by Lama Shammas)
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.