18 years of torture: Lebanese survivor exposes horrors of Assad regime prisons

A Lebanese man who endured 18 years in prisons under Syria’s fallen Assad regime described how the severity of torture led people to accept accusations against them without even reading the charges.

Muaz Merab from Tripoli was the father of a five-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter when he was detained in Syria in 2006. Today, he is a grandfather.

Having spent more than a third of his life in Syrian dungeons, he shared his harrowing story of survival during those 18 years with Anadolu.

Merab, 50, said that he was detained in 2006 in Douma, a district in Damascus, by Assad regime forces while returning to Lebanon from Iraq, where he had been working in the press sector during the US invasion of Iraq.

He detailed the various torture methods used by guards and interrogators, stating: “Beatings, forced nudity, intimidation, and humiliation were some of the tactics they employed.”

“One of the tools they used to beat us was electric cables. With every blow, our flesh tore, and our bodies bled,” he recalled, lamenting: “Among the methods of torture was the ‘wheel method.’”

“A person’s hands and feet were tied, and they were wedged into a wheel before being beaten,” he added.

Calling the well-documented torture methods in Assad regime prisons entirely “accurate,” Merab stated that the intensity of torture forced detainees to accept any charges leveled against them.

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