“Al-Shabah, the wheel and rape” – The International Investigation Committee divulges how the Syrian regime developed its heinous torture methods against detainees

Not many days have passed following the inception of the Syrian civil war, when inculpatory documents were revealed by the International Accountability Committee regarding an initiative of the Al-Assad regime, namely the formation of the so-called “Al-Shabiha” units. Subsequently, a report by an independent Committee, belonging to the United Nations, was issued; this report further revealed how the Central Government in Damascus developed its methods in the field of torture against anyone opposing the regime with the purpose of extracting confessions and information, often confronted with prefabricated charges.
This report was issued on the background of the gathering of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and covered the time period from January 2020 until April 2023 with the main focus on the different ways and methods of practised torture, such as for example enforced disappearance. The collected evidence is based on 254 interviews whereby 200 of the interviewed persons themselves were subjected to torture or/and having directly witnessed torture. In addition, more than 40 interviews were also conducted with medical experts and staff members and people who survived torture as well as family members of currently incarcerated people inside the regime-led prisons.

“Al-Shabah” and “the closet”
The report of the International Investigation Committee further mentioned that the incarceration usually takes place inside the detention centres, administered by the Syrian government, whereby the majority of the detainees are isolated for long time periods of any contact with family members or friends and the outside world. Furthermore, detainees are prohibited from talking to anyone outside the prison while being subjected to heinous ways of torture, deterrence and maltreatment with the goal of coercing them to confess to whatever the Syrian regime forces want. Among the mentioned methods of torture practices is the suspension by the victim’s limbs for a long period of time; this torture method, according to several witnesses, used to be called “Al-Shabah” (Arabic term for “Phantom”) whereby there also was another torture method, often referred to as the “wheel” where a person is folded and placed in a car tire for a long time period.
In addition to the two torture methods of “Al-Shabah” and the “Wheel”, persons were also subjected to excruciating beating where sticks, water hoses and electricity wires as well as other tools were used. Further, people also had to endure only beatings or beatings in concomitance with the “Shabah” and “Wheel” torture methods, in addition to electrical shocks and burnings of different parts of the body; moreover, detainees were also subjected to sexual violence and assault also through beating the reproductive organs.
The report further reveals how the detainees became victims of other inhumane practices including the placement in overcrowded prison cells with many other prisoners, in addition to the deprival of enough drinking water and food as well as very limited access to medical treatment or in many cases complete medical negligence and the lack of provision of medicines; in concomitance, there is a steady increase of diseases spreading out in the prison cells, often leading to the brutal death of many detainees.
In the framework of the Syrian authorities’ usage of torture, the report focuses on the centres of the four main intelligence services where the maltreatment and torture inside the detention centres is reported; these main centres include the military intelligence, the air force, security and political intelligence as well as the general intelligence, in addition to the security and criminal administration of the police and the military prisons.
Every government-led intelligence centre has its headquarters in Damascus and consists of several central branches which are administered inside the whole country, where thousands of people are incarcerated in. The report especially highlights the violations inside the detention centres, including the military intelligence branch 235 (also known as “Palestinian branch”) and 261 in Homs as well as 271 in Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib.
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Torture is also vastly practised in the Air Force Intelligence branches in the Harasta, Aleppo, Mezzeh, and Kweris airports, the political security branches in Al-Fahiya, Damascus, and Homs, the General Intelligence branches in Aleppo and Khan Shaykhun in Idlib, the Criminal Security branch in Homs, and the military prisons in Saydnaya and Balouni.

The role of armed groups

Torture and ill-treatment remain serious issues of concern in parts of Syria under the control of non-state armed groups, particularly those perceived to oppose the group in power, whereby the forms of torture, patterns of arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances by those groups are similar to those practiced by the Central Government in Damascus.

The report also documents torture and ill-treatment from three armed groups, not belonging to any particular state and controlling parts of Syria with many detainees and prisoners; those groups are Hayat Tahrir Ash-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) whereby with regard to HTS, the facilities in which violations have been documented since 2020 include the Sarmada and Hareem detention centers as well as Branches 107 and 77, in addition to Branch 33 in Idlib and a detention center reportedly attached to a court in Sarmada.

On the hand, the National Army facilities in which such violations have been documented since 2020 include prisons and temporary facilities run by individual factions of the National Army, including Suleiman Shah, Hamza, Sultan Murad, Ahrar al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sharqiya, Faylaq al-Sham, and Muhammad al-Fateh, as well as facilities run by the army and the civilian police in the National Army.

Women and returnees from exile

The report further indicates towards the maltreatment Syrians are subjected to upon their return to their home country; this in fact constitutes an especially worrying danger; in regards to the increasing pressure on Syrian refugees and asylum seekers to return from adjacent countries or other places.
Moreover, many countries seek to repatriate Syrian refugees back to their home countries, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, under the claims and pretext of existing economic pressure in these respective countries. However, many international organizations and also countries warn from the peril of this further step, as it carries a risk with the lives of these people and the possibility that many of them will be subjected to acts of reprisal and retaliation. Therefore, solutions to the Syrian crisis must be made before the refugees’ repatriation.

The Committee indeed found out, pursuant to the report, that many women and young girls were also subjected to different kinds of sexual violence, including rape, threats of rape and sexual torture and maltreatment as well as sexual humiliation. In 2020, a woman from Northern Syria was arrested and subsequently incarcerated in the branch of the air force intelligence service in the military airport of Kweris; during the interrogation she was asked about her relatives – cousins and uncles – she was demanded to confess to her role and was subjected to attacks from the interrogator who punched her and tried to assault her, until she found herself losing her consciousness and bleeding.

The victim further reported that she did not know whether she was sexually assaulted or whether the bleeding occurred as a result of immense fear; her family paid thousands of dollars in order to free her but the interrogator kept texting her and menacing her with rape even though she managed to flee from her country after this incident. She consequently mentioned that her experiences severely influenced her physically and psychologically.

Another woman who was incarcerated for months in the branch of the military intelligence services in Homs between 2022 until 2023 stated, five days before her liberation, that a security officer attempted to sexually assault her; she was subsequently transferred outside the prison cell, with her eyes blindfolded and a plastic bag over her head. Meanwhile, she felt that a person was sexually “molesting” her, however, he stopped after she continued to resists; however, instead he commenced to severely beat her with a cable on all parts of her body.

A third woman, who was incarcerated in 2021 by the general intelligence service, stated that she heard threats of rape during the arrest, however, she was not raped but stripped of her clothes, handcuffed with cables and beaten with sticks and cables by four security guards and interrogators in front of the other female detainees who were crying.

Rape and sexual violence against men

The International Committee further documented cases of rape and sexual violence, afflicting the detainees, which is not only limited to women but was and is still also practiced against men, teenagers and even children; one of the detainees stated that he was sexually assaulted through the insertion of a stick into his anus or pieces of glass with the purpose of humiliating the detainee and violating his dignity.

Another prisoner mentioned that he witnessed in one of the prisons that younger detainees were forced into raping elder detainees whereby other detainees reported that they were subjected to sexual humiliation; what happened to one of the victims in the branch of the air force intelligence center in Homs was also the assault of his genitals as well as the usage of iron rods during sexual maltreatment, detainees are coerced to endure.

Medical personnel, responsible for providing medical treatment to detainees said that the majority of male prisoners, incarcerated in government-led prisons, were subjected to different sorts of sexual violence, including rape, sexual violence or threats of rape; some of them even became the victims of genital mutilation whereby in some cases, detainees were infected with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome “AIDS” as well as syphilis inside the prisons.