A picture of the detainee Alan Zein Al-Abidin Mahmoud



The criminal dictatorial Assad regime has fallen, but the suffering of the Syrians still rings in the memory of time, and the groans of the souls of those who were arrested and tortured for their opposing opinion or for nothing, continue. Whenever I remember my brother's life circumstances when I was young and grew up with his circumstances and the suffering of his groans as a result of what he received in his prison in Tadmur and my father's suffering, crying and grieving over what happened to my brother, my hatred and resentment for this criminal Assad regime increased, and my insistence on standing up to the criminal Assad regime with my modest capabilities, and all my writings were about the injustice and tyranny of the Assad family against the Syrians. I saw the suffering and tragedies of all Syrians in my brother's suffering and tragedy.
Here I will continue talking about the suffering of my father and our family from the crimes of the criminal Assad regime that began forty years ago. His suffering is like the suffering of millions of Syrians who have tasted the horrors. The Syrians did not enjoy themselves for a moment during Assad's rule.

My father and his family had a share of their crimes. I will tell the whole story. The lines of writing will be a bit long. Please read it in full.

It started in the early eighties when my father bought a hotel in the city of Aleppo. The hotel was a haven for Kurds who traveled to Aleppo for treatment or for some purpose. Many of our Kurds in Hasakah, Amuda and Darbasiyah know this and slept in my father's hotel. The name of the hotel at the time was (Shtoura) and the name changed later.

My father wanted to gradually move his business to Aleppo and move his family and live there. At that time, the Hama events were taking place, and their repercussions moved to Aleppo. The security branches of the criminal Assad regime were setting up security checkpoints in the streets of Aleppo, and changing the locations of those checkpoints from one street to another according to what the orders required of them. Several months after my father had lived there, it was the time of high school exams, as my brother was a baccalaureate student and his dream was to enter the College of Fine Arts because of his wonderful sense of the art of drawing and his passion for this art since childhood. When he and his friend went to take the exam in June 1981, it was his second exam for the English language subject, and on the way to the exam center, unfortunately, he passed through a street where there was a security checkpoint. When the checkpoint personnel stopped them and asked them why they were passing through this street because a curfew was imposed on it (as the security branches were imposing a curfew on some streets), the checkpoint personnel interrogated them and asked them why they had left the house and passed through this street. My brother and his friend told them that they were going to take the baccalaureate exam and that they did not know that this street was prohibited from roaming. When they asked, Their IDs, they did not carry them because

they were carrying exam cards, but my brother was unlucky when he said that he forgot his ID in his jacket pocket at the hotel, and when he asked him about the name of the hotel, here was the disaster, as the name of the hotel at that time was Chtaura, the name was changed later, and when my brother mentioned the name of the hotel, he received a strong blow to his face (Chtaura was the name of a city in Lebanon, a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood), my brother did not know that the name of the hotel would be a disaster for him, and when that element slapped him, my brother and his friend fled out of fear, so the security elements fired bullets that hit my


brother's thigh and then arrested them, and after searching by my father, he received the news that he was in Tadmor prison. Here began the stage of searching and mediation, my father, after communicating with many who had acquaintances with the criminal regime, after a year he was able to get him out of prison, after he sold everything from the hotel, his property and his real estate. But after my brother was released from prison, my father and all the family and relatives were shocked, as my brother was released with a severe mental illness and memory loss, he did not remember anything except what happened to him in prison. He talked about his journey in prison, as my brother told my father that after he was shot in the thigh, they arrested him with his friend and took him to Tadmur prison


(many people know what Tadmur prison is? And the crimes that were happening there were no less than what happened in Sednaya prison. Tadmur prison was a hideous, terrifying and frightening place, after that that terror and fear moved to Sednaya prison, which was built in the early nineties of the last century, and I think in 1990 or 1991 by a company from East Germany). My brother said that they took him to Tadmur prison without treating him or trying him. The bullet remained in his thigh for ten days. After his wound worsened and as a result of his screaming


in pain, he was transferred to the hospital. After he had removed the bullet from his thigh and before the wound had healed, they returned him to his detention center. And so the pain and screaming continued, along with the physical and psychological torture until he completely collapsed. He spoke while trembling with fear and terror and turning to those around him about his suffering and what he saw, from the pulling out of nails and beating with batons, sticks and electric shocks, in addition to being dragged naked in a military vehicle from behind and dragged in the Tadmur prison yard, which was paved and filled with small stones, until the blood flowed from their bodies, in addition to


the psychological terror through the strong lights directed at them day and night and the loud sounds and terrifying music. My brother’s story of detention did not end here, but another stage of torment began after he was released from prison, where fear and terror accompanied him, and my father admitted him to a psychiatric hospital for treatment and to give him sedatives and sleeping pills so that he would forget. My brother did not recover and did not forget the terror and fear and what happened to him in prison. He was afraid to go out and mix with people.


He remained like that for twenty years. In 2001, while I was visiting Damascus, where my brother lived with his mother, that is, my father’s wife, because I am from my father’s second wife, one night at four in the morning I heard the screams of my second mother, that is, my father’s wife. What I saw was terror, as my brother burned his hands on the cooking gas fire in the kitchen. We took him to the hospital. In the hospital, his fingers were charred. The doctors confirmed that they should be amputated. After three days in the hospital.

Ezz El-Din Malla