How Europe Has Become The Epicenter For Syrian War Crimes Cases
Omar Alshogre can remember every detail of his torture in Syrian jails: the electric shocks, the brutal beatings, the rancid food and open wounds, the days he was suspended by his wrists from the ceiling for hours, then returned to a crammed cell where sleep was only possible in shifts.
Sometimes the torture consisted of forcing him to listen. "They put us in the corridor just to hear the torture, and this guy is saying, 'Please kill me. I can tell you whatever you want. Stop or kill me,' " he recalls.
Brutality was standard in Branch 215, a military intelligence prison in Damascus known for gruesome torture techniques as documented by Human Rights Watch.
Alshogre was 17 when he was arrested and sent to Branch 215 in December 2012 for joining protests against the regime of President Bashar Assad in his hometown of Bayda, on the Mediterranean coast. It was the Arab Spring. In Tunisia and Egypt, dictators were already out. He wanted change in Syria too. Instead, he was swept up in a brutal campaign to stifle dissent. The Assad regime has waged a war against civilians, jailing tens of thousands who are packed into filthy cells where thousands have been tortured and killed.
"The first dead body I saw [in] prison, I was scared," he remembers, "because when you see a dead body you see yourself. You can see your face. That's you going to be like him very, very soon."
Remarkably, Alshogre survived for three years. Many prisoners died within weeks or months.
Now, harrowing testimonies like Alshogre's could be key to what happens next.
As the Assad government solidifies its hold after more than eight years of civil war, a network of survivors and lawyers who fled Syria, many bearing stories of torture, is now gaining some ground in pursuing justice against regime officials accused of
