Syrian security officials tortured pregnant mother with electric shocks

Syrian security officials tortured a pregnant mother and her husband with electric shocks in front of the couple's infant sons, according to a man who was held in the same cell.

Ayman Karnebo spent a week in prison in Idlib province when the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began to spread last May.

His account sheds more light on the depravity of a prison system in which a family can be locked up and subjected to brutal torment.

Karnebo spent a day in the cell with the family, who were of Somali origin. As the revolt took hold, all outsiders were viewed with deep suspicion, apparently explaining their arrest and detention in the town of Jisr al-Shugur.

The father's name was Ahmed, and he looked to be in his twenties. His wife was about the same age and their two boys were aged about three and five. Also in the cell was Ahmed's mother, a woman in her fifties.

"The security men wanted them to confess to destroying buildings. They wanted them to admit they had come from outside the country to cause trouble in Syria," said Karnebo. "But they were just people who had come to Syria to look for a better life."

All three adults were tortured with electric shocks in front of the terrified children. Shocks were systematically applied to the most vulnerable parts of the body, concentrating on elbows, hands and toes.

"I know the Somali man's name because they were shouting at him, 'Ahmed confess, Ahmed you must confess'," said Karnebo. "When they went to torture the wife, the husband was shouting, 'She is pregnant, she has a baby inside her'. But they had no problem with doing this to her. They had no mercy." After suffering this torment for a day, the family were transferred to another jail. Karnebo believes they were taken to Idlib central prison, but their fate is unknown.

He bears the scars inflicted by the same treatment: gashes in his elbows and hands show where electric shocks were applied. "They accused me of destroying the office of [Assad's] Ba'ath party," said Karnebo, 37. "They found I had a Turkish sim card for my mobile, so they accused me of communicating with the opposition in Turkey. They said I was raising money for guns for the rebels."

When he refused to confess, he was pushed into the same cell as the Somalis, where his torture took place. Karnebo still refused to sign an admission of guilt, so an official known as Abdul Majid forged a signature on a confession.

One of Karnebo's relations is a local Ba'ath party official, and paid a bribe to secure his release. Thanks to the influence of this relation, Karnebo considers his own treatment to have been relatively lenient. "He paid bribes to make sure I wasn't tortured so badly," he said.

Karnebo fled across the Turkish border to a refugee camp in the town of Yayladagi.

Many of the fugitives, who live in blue and white tents in the grounds of a hospital, have suffered at the hands of Assad's forces. But one man, known as Mukhtar, was part of the machine that inflicted the torment. He worked as a guard in the investigations wing of Idlib prison, where officials would routinely torture inmates. Mukhtar, 32, did not take part, but saw the methods used to extract information and confessions.

Some prisoners were forced into the cross position: spread-eagled against a wall and compelled to stand on tiptoe, with wrists and ankles bound. They were then subjected to electric shocks, with attention paid to the toes.

Others were tied to a table, exposing the soles of their feet, which were whipped with an electric flex. Some male prisoners were subjected to sexual assaults, with one official said to be notorious for violating his charges.

After witnessing such abuses for seven months, Mukhtar fled to Turkey last November. "For me, all the prisoners were my people. I never wanted to see them harmed," he said.

The treatment of political prisoners is often effective in breaking their will. Yusuf Dandash spent 23 days in jail last year, blindfolded and handcuffed. His feet were whipped, before shocks were applied to his toes. "I gave them everything," he said. "I accepted what they wanted."