For how many years were you sentenced? Recalling his burdens, he answered, “for five years!” With a smile of children, I added, “they succeeded; I mean your years of detention and they are equal to the years I spent at the toilet of the prison.”
It was a conversation that was not erased from the memory of the former detainee D.S, although five years have passed, it was the first conversation between him and the detainee, Rageed Ahmed Al-Tutari, who is a well-known detainee. He is one of the oldest detainees in Sydnaya Prison. However, what was very surprising to D.S is the fact that Al-Tutari can joke and smile even though he has spent 32 years in the prisons of the regime.
After a while, D.S got to know the story of Al-Tutari, which has started in 1981, when he was 27 years old and a warplane pilot. But, because his colleague escaped with his warplane to Jordan, he was detained with the rest of the squadron members by the Air Intelligence.
After they interrogated him, he was charged of covering his colleague, and he was sent to Al-Mezza prison where he stayed in a cell for two years. After that, he was transferred to Tadmur Prison until 2000. In 2000, he was transferred to Adra prison under the pretext of cancelling the Emergency Law.
D.S describes Al-Tutari that everybody loves Rageed because he gets along with all the detainees even the Salafists and the radical ones used to respect him. We used to learn from his will and steadfastness. In spite of being detained for 32 years, he has never applied to the prison administration with even one single paper just because the paper had to be written with the following header, (Sir Mr. General, head of the prison….). He rejected calling anyone Sir! Even though a detainee might need a visit request, or a request to see a doctor or any thing of the sort, he used to adapt with what he had, in a rejection to the humiliation.
There is a story for the food remains with Al-Tutari
The prison does not only take the years from your life, but also it takes the means of life from you; this is how D.S defines the political prisoner. He continues, “this definition; however, is not the same for Rageed Al-Tutari. The prison transformed Rageed into a sculpture and a painter. He used to sculpt out of the bones which remained from the food using a pound or the rounding part of a thrown watch in the prison’s yard. His sculpted pieces were small, vivid, and vibrant. Also, he sculpted toys using a mixed material of bread remains, sugar, and lemon acid. He used to draw and paint with whatever was available. Moreover, he used to make paintings and Masabeh using olive seeds.
D.S recalls how Al-Tutari used to organize training courses for detainees to teach the chess. This is after he had made chess pieces out of bread and drew the chess board on a piece of cloth.
“Tadmur is not a prison…it is a place to transform detainees to animals.”
According to D.S, Rageed Al-Tutari used to ease the Sydnaya prison detainees. He used to tell them his stories in Tadmur Prison pointing that Sydnaya prison was like a release compared to Tadmur Prison. Furthermore, according to what Al-Tutari said, the Tadmur prison administration used to forbid the prisoners from raising their heads and seeing others’ faces. This, according to him became a habit later on. No one dares to look at the other!
When they were moved to Sydnaya prison, the detainees used to walk in the prison’s yard during the break with heads down and even when the prison’s chief would order them to raise there heads, they would not dare to do it. When some of them did it, they were beaten and few were killed in that incident.
Al-Tutari says, “We did not raise our heads until the Sydnaya Prison chief came to raise each detainee’s head by his own hands. This was the first time we got to see each other’s faces although we have been in the same dorm for a long time. We cried a lot.”
Al-Tutari reiterates, “Tadmur is not a prison, it is a place to take your humanity from you and to transform the detainee to an animal!”
D.S says, “During the Sydnaya events in 5/7/2008, which lasted 8 months, we used to wish for death. Once when I said to Al-Tutari: there is no difference now between Sydnaya Prison and Tadmur’s. He responded jokingly, ‘one day in Tadmur Prison is like a thousand days in Sydnaya Prison.’”
Al-Tutari would not complain or talk about his burdens with anyone although his face would tell his sadness when we would call him “Abu Wael”. His son was called Wael. Rageed had not seen him since 2005. When he was detained, his wife was pregnant with Wael.
D.S emphasizes that Rageed does not let his son visit him because the Prison Administration would force him to wear the penalty uniform. When D.S tried to convince him of accepting the visit of his son, he said, “I am waiting for my trial to know what I am guilty of, then I will wear the penalty uniform.
It is mentioned that Rageed was put on trial after 4 years. His trial lasted for one minute and summarized in two sentences by the judge. The first one was when the judge asked him for his name, and the second one when he told him to go away. Al-Tutari says, “When I went back to the dorm and told my friends about what happened. They said, ‘congratulations! You were sentenced and the sentences were either execution or life sentence back then.''
Zaman Alwasl- Exclusive
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