After Zaman al-Wasl newspaper published hundreds of photos of detainees held forcibly by Assad's National Defense Forces, one of the few survivors emerged to tell the truth behind these silent numbers. Muhammad Abdullah al-Qajah, who appears in one of the photos bearing the number 402, survived the death that claimed the lives of most of those with him, bearing witness to the fate of his peers who were killed under torture or as a result of deliberate medical negligence.
Qajah identifies the location where his photo was taken, saying, "The photo was taken on the day I was transferred to the National Defense Forces headquarters near Qasioun."
Al-Qajah, a native of the city of al-Ruhaiba in the Damascus countryside, was arrested on August 30, 2013, and spent 85 days in a living hell, where the fate of most of those who entered this branch was execution in the infamous "field court."
The Price of Surviving Execution
Al-Qajah says, "My journey wasn't long, thanks to God and to my father, who was able to reach the executioners and pay a sum of money." This sum, he explains, was the price of his referral to the regular judiciary on charges of "joining and financing"—a move that spared him the near-certain fate of execution in a field court. Despite his release by the investigating judge, Al-Qajah remains under judicial investigation. "How many soldiers did you kill?": The beginning of the torture journey
Al-Qajah recounts the first moments of arrival, saying: "On the first day, they took us to the command headquarters before placing us in a dormitory in a battalion affiliated with the 105th Brigade of the Republican Guard. There, I heard the voice of the commander of the National Defense Forces, Fadi Saqr, saying to one of the detained officers, a pilot: 'Get ready, I'm going to execute you by the gallows.' I was speechless at the time, but the voice never left me.
We were with a dermatologist from the bank named Khaldoun, whose only crime was that he held American citizenship and had returned to Syria. When I asked him who had spoken to the officer, he said, 'This is the commander of the National Defense Forces. He interrogated me in the air.'"
Al-Qajah then reveals the brutal rituals that began the journey of each new detainee. "The first question was: 'How many soldiers did you kill?'" He adds: "With this question, the torture journey began with beatings, cursing, and insults."
He describes the horrific methods the interrogators used to extract forced confessions: "If they were unable to extract a confession, they would heat water or oil and burn it." The detainee's back." These burns, which later developed into severe ulcers and infections, often led to the detainee's slow death due to medical negligence.
Dormitory: The Grave of the Living
Al-Qajah presents a grim picture of life inside the overcrowded dormitories, which were like mass graves for the living. "There were between 160 and 175 people in the dormitory, crowded and half-naked in a space no larger than four meters wide."
He explains the forced sleeping regime known as "tasyif," where 20 people slept with their heads at each other's feet. "The last two were trampled on so they could take their places," a scene that embodies the most horrific forms of humiliation. Detainees who returned from interrogation rounds with burns or fractures were assigned a place on a worn blanket by the sink opposite the toilets, where they were left to face death.
Microcosm and a Stolen Childhood
Detention was not limited to a specific group; it included intellectuals, professors, lawyers, merchants, students, and even the president. Municipality. Even more painful is the sight of children, such as the nine-year-old boy from Al-Maliha, Mubarak (13 years old), and Shadi Muhammad (pictured), whom Al-Qajah remembers well: "I remember him entering the dormitory. His hands were tied with a rope and pulled so tightly that they swelled and turned blue." These children, like most of the men in the Zaman Al-Wasl photos, were not destined to survive.
Testimony for History
The testimony of Al-Qajah gives a voice to the victims who appear in the photos as lifeless numbers, and confirms the fact that the extermination in the prisons of the defunct Syrian regime was a systematic policy. He is one of the very few survivors who emerged from these death camps to tell everyone's story, demanding justice for the thousands of lives lost in the darkness.
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