I know people tortured under Saddam Hussein at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, under Ben Ali in Tunisia, & by Turkey in decades past who said what they’ve heard of torture methods in Syria was worse. The Stalinist gulag element & psychological sadism of tortures was next level under Assad. - ThreadSky

monicamarks.bsky.social • 83 days ago

I know people tortured under Saddam Hussein at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, under Ben Ali in Tunisia, & by Turkey in decades past who said what they’ve heard of torture methods in Syria was worse.

The Stalinist gulag element & psychological sadism of tortures was next level under Assad.

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monicamarks.bsky.social•83 days ago

If the baseline standard of comparison in Syria were a more normal dictatorship—something authoritarian, but less industrially bloody & less insanely sadistic—the country’s minorities & secularists would be way less likely to cheer Assad’s downfall.

Instead, many have trouble imagining worse.

monicamarks.bsky.social•83 days ago

That’s not hard to grasp when you know about the Assad regime’s torture methods, when you see Sednaya Prison’s rooms of shoes, its “salt rooms” full of corpses, when you see its acid pools & body grinders that look like paper presses for pulverising those corpses:

https://www.mtv.com.lb/en/news/international/1529451/watch--the-body-grinder-machine-in-sednaya

monicamarks.bsky.social•83 days ago

When you understand that children were born to imprisoned women from systemic rape by Assad’s forces, when you watch interviews like this—which even predates Syria’s 2011 revolution attempt—showing how some imprisoned children never saw or learned what a bird or a tree are:

https://youtu.be/PrXfwXIfqoE?si=KePcXuk7QrtTMbUy

monicamarks.bsky.social•83 days ago

When you understand that this was a regime that tortured children—children. When you understand that its torture of children was in no way a hyperbolic exaggeration or isolated fluke:

mokeeffee.bsky.social•83 days ago

Was this a site used for special renditions after 9/11? We know Syria was one of the countries used by US/UK, maybe the files will come to light or is there some ‘strategic’ bombing getting rid of the evidence?

monicamarks.bsky.social•83 days ago

When you imagine how their parents felt.

This is a photo of just one of the young children whom Assad’s forces tortured to death.

His name was Hamza al Khateeb. The regime detained him at a pro-democracy protest in 2011. He wasn’t doing anything wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Hamza_Ali_Al-Khateeb

monicamarks.bsky.social•83 days ago

Assad’s regime finally delivered his mutilated corpse back to his parents. Horrified, his parents saw that his penis had been cut off and that he was covered in cigarette burns & evidence of electrical shocks.

*This* is why so many Syrians are ecstatically jubilant now & struggle to imagine worse.

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