Assad

108: Surviving Syria's "Human Slaughterhouse" - Assad's Sednaya Prison

Omar Alshogre is currently 28 years old. He was first arrested at 15 for attending a protest against the Al Assad regime, and was arrested a total of 11 times between 2011 and 2013. His last arrest, in 2012, along with the arrests of two of his cousins, led to his incarceration in the Branch 215 military intelligence detention center for 21 months, where he experienced torture on a daily basis. In 2014 he was transferred to Sednaya prison, where he experienced even more brutal forms of torture, and where prisoners were subjected to summary execution for talking without permission. During his period of incarceration, Omar was also forced to remove the bodies of prisoners and to mark their foreheads for identification.

Many of the systematic abuses of Syria’s Al Assad regime have been visually documented in the 2014 Syria Detainee Report, or the Caesar Report. Caesar is the alias for a photographer with the Syrian Military police who worked in secret with a Syrian opposition group to leak graphic images of the torture, starvation, and murder of prisoners at the hands of the al Assad regime. The report documents "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". Human Rights Watch spent six months investigating the authenticity of the photographic evidence and concluded that it was genuine. Signed into law by President Trump in 2019, the Caesar Act, or Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, is a set of sanctions against the Al Assad regime for war crimes against the Syrian civilian population. 

After suspending Syria from the Arab League for 12 years, last month the Arab League voted unanimously to readmit Syria’s Al Assad regime.

Omar Alshogre is a public speaker and human rights advocate, who endured three years of unjust imprisonment and torture in Syria before being smuggled out and brought to safety. Currently, he serves as the Director of Detainees Affairs for the Syrian Emergency Task Force and the spokesperson for Atrocities Tracker, dedicating himself to the critical cause of advocating for the release of those unjustly detained. Omar has spoken before the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, and presented his insights at several world-renowned universities, organizations, and news outlets including Harvard, Georgetown, CNN, and Aljazeera.
 

Episode 27: Assil Alnaser - Protestor. Prisoner. Student. Syrian Woman

Episode 65: Nour Qurmosh - On the Ground in Idlib, Syria

 
 
 
 
 
 

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Episode 65: On the Ground in Idlib, Syria

Since the war in Syria began in 2011 more than 12 million of its citizens (over half of its pre-war population) have been displaced. With global interest in the war having waned in recent years, remaining concerns about the Syrian people tend to focus on the relatively small number of refugees who have attempted to reach Europe. However nearly half of all displaced Syrians still reside in Syria, with the overwhelming number of refugees left languishing and forgotten in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.

What’s more, Idlib in northern Syria, is one of the few parts of the country that has not been recaptured by the Assad regime, but nearly a decade of war has taken an extreme toll on its inhabitants, with Coronavirus, continued fighting, and economic collapse creating a perfect humanitarian storm that has left Idlib in its most desperate circumstances of the war, with millions facing immanent risk of starvation, exposure to the elements, and perhaps another mass movement of people from the region like the world has not seen since 2015.

Nour Qurmosh grew up in Idlib and continues to work there delivering aid to his fellow citizens. At 23 years old, Nour has spent the past 9 years living under Syria’s civil war. He gives us a rare glimpse into what nearly a decade of brutal violence has looked like to someone who has lived through all of it. His account is personal, frank, and possibly upsetting. It also speaks for itself.

Cited in this episode:
Mercy Corps Report
World Vision Report
The Guardian

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