In Solidarity with Female Detainees in Adra Prison on Hunger Strike

Adraa_ladies_strike

Starting Monday morning (1 July 2013) a group of Syrian woman detainees in Adra prison commenced an open-ended hunger strike, their position was announced in this following letter addressed to the Syrian regime’s Court of Terrorism, which reads:

To the Director of Public Prosecutions handing cases in the Court of Terrorism
Two main points
Please note that there were more than one letter sent to you to inquire about our situation in the Department of deposit in the women’s prison in Adra, None of our letters have been answered … and when we asked the prison administration about our mysterious situation. The prison’s reply was always that nothing to do with the prison administration and you officials in the terrorism court are the only ones who can deal and responsible for our long and hard presence term in the prison, especially we have among us a lot of older women, the sick and pregnant women, mothers and university students and employees, and where the number of inmates is increasing day after day while there are only a few days on the advent of Ramadan. . Accordingly, the inmates in the Department of deposit in Adra prison for women has decided to start a peaceful hunger strike starting Monday Dated 01/07/2013 until our status in prison is considered, dealt with and accelerate brining our cases to the competent courts, noting that many of us, the striking prisoned women have exceeded the duration of four to six months. As we draw your attention to the fact that many of the inmates are barred from communicating and getting in touch with their parents and relatives. Also, most of our parents and relatives cannot come to visit us in the prison due to the current poor and unsafe conditions of the roads which increases our suffering. Please reply to us clearly and quickly, and thank you very much
Political Inmates in Adra prison .. Department of deposit

The letter was obtained from reliable sources within Adra prison and translated by the organisers of the solidarity movement with the striking prisoners

The Forgotten Ones in Syrian Jails for Decades

04/06/2012

Aljazeera.net – Exclusive

Without lawyers or fair trials, and without knowing their destiny, political prisoners languished in Syrian jails for many years. About 1500 of them were deported from Saidnaya prison to other prisons last July; and yet the regime still denies their very existence.

The Syrian authorities misled the Arab observers and prevented them from meeting the prisoners during their visits to the jails. One a former prisoner was given a card claiming that he was sentenced to life imprisonment (25 years), although his detention period exceeded that, and the observers’ committee was not allowed to meet him. استمر في القراءة

A Memory of A Year in the Purgatory: A Testimony about Prison and Journalistic Work

Amer Matar

25 April 2012

Purgatory, is the most proper expression to describe the world of the Syrian State Security branches.. to live death in a closed narrow space, between two worlds. Between these two worlds I lived death.

On 28 March 2011 Bashar Al-Assad was a few meters from my house, laughing, while I was being tortured in my bedroom and the jailers’ shoes were scattering my clothes and notebooks. استمر في القراءة

Eye Witness Accounts and Stories from within the Syrian Regime’s Prisons

Omar al Asaad

Dr Mohammad flips his new ID card, looks at this neighbour in the bed next to his bed and breaks out into a fit of laughter. The ID card which the detained doctor now holds in Adra prison includes a sentence that points out his crime: “weakening the national feelings!” He shares the same crime with Feras who is lying on the top bunk bed. The doctor ascertains that “this lad [Feras] is a simple naive guy, he isn’t crazy or mentally disabled but he does not fully comprehend what is happening around him. He even demonstrates speech problems and his facial features from a medical standpoint look abnormal.

 

استمر في القراءة