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Syria survivor of torture in Assad prisons admitted to top US university

A Syrian refugee has been admitted into the US’ prestigious Georgetown University

November 3, 2020 at 2:00 pm

A Syrian refugee and former detainee who underwent three years of torture in the Assad regime’s prison system has been admitted into the US’ prestigious Georgetown University.

Omar Alshoghre, now a Sweden-based public speaker and activist who seeks to educate the world on his experience, posted a video of himself celebrating the university’s acceptance in the mountains of Norway last week, exclaiming “I’ve made it to Georgetown!”

Speaking to Middle East Monitor, Alshoghre said: “My admission to Georgetown University is an act of defiance against the Syrian regime. For years they tried to break me, but this decision proves they failed. They could not break me, instead they made me stronger.”

Hailing from Syria’s coastal village of Al-Bayda, Alshoghre’s story is a shocking one, having been arrested along with his cousins at the young age of 15 when soldiers from President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime raided his uncle’s house in 2012. That was a year after the Syrian revolution broke out, prompting the regime to label anyone with even the slightest alleged ties to protests as “terrorists”.

He detailed his story in an interview with Middle East Monitor last year, saying that from then on they were forced to endure daily bouts of torture, being forced to make false confessions in efforts to stop the torture from taking place. One by one, his cousins died until he was the only one remaining.

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Meanwhile, his father and brothers were killed in their hometown in the infamous Bayda and Baniyas massacres conducted by the regime in 2013, being among the hundreds who were killed in the majority Sunni areas.

After undergoing one of the regime courts’ “five-second trials” and being moved to the notorious Sednaya prison near the capital Damascus, he was released in 2015 when his mother – following numerous previous attempts – paid the authorities.

They then fled to Turkey and then to Sweden – with Alshoghre weighing just 34 kilogrammes – where he gradually rebuilt his life and education, learnt fluent Swedish and English, and culminated in his admittance into Georgetown University.

His defiance of the regime’s efforts to break him and other survivors, he maintains, is the biggest success and his acceptance into the university symbolises Al-Assad’s failure to repress the Syrian people’s freedom. “My future at Georgetown, like everything I do, proves the regime cannot stop us, the people of Syria, for overcoming their oppression and leading successful lives.”

He also references education as a dream of his father’s, who always wished and pushed him to attain a high level of education. His acceptance into Georgetown University, therefore, is for him also the fulfilment of his legacy towards his father.

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